Awatchfire

Garfield County, Washington

Columbia Center Mutual Aid Fire

Burning 6.0 miles south of Pataha and 6.4 miles south of Pomeroy, since Wednesday 14 October.

Map of Washington. The Columbia Center Mutual Aid Fire burns 89 miles from Spokane and 143 miles from Yakima, and 257 miles from the state capital, Olympia.
The fire sits 89 miles from Spokane and 143 miles from Yakima.

150

acres burned so far

21

hours burning so far

—

no share of the perimeter reported held yet

The picture as of 9:09am today

The Columbia Center Mutual Aid Fire is still listed as active, and has not been looked at lately. The last heat was seen 19 hours ago.

No fresh look at this fire for 19 hours. Everything on the map below was seen before then.

Shaded relief map of the Columbia Center Mutual Aid Fire. Amber flames mark every place that gave off heat in the last day; the shading is the shape of the ground.
Heat in the last day Higher ground pale, valleys dark

19hours

since anything was last seen giving off heat — about 1:50pm on Wednesday, local time.

79% less

energy in the last 0.5 hours of the record than in the 0.5 before them — the fire was cooler when it was last seen.

6.3miles

is how close the heat has come to Pataha at any point in the record. In the last day the nearest heat has been 6.3 miles from it, and the closest this fire has come to Pomeroy is 6.9 miles, 6.9 in the last day. The two figures are the same because the record is barely a day long: the last day is very nearly all of it.

1.0miles

is the furthest any heat has been seen from the point on the official record — the width of the ground involved so far.

Smoke has been recorded lying over this ground eight times so far. The thickest of it was moderate between 10:10am and 1:00pm local time. The last of those windows closed 17 hours ago, so what is overhead now is not known.

One place is burning

0.7 miles south-east of the recorded point

6 readings of heat in the last day — all of the heat seen in that time.

Nothing close enough to the fire has reported the conditions on the ground.

How it got here

One day of record on a day-2 fire

The record here begins at 12:47pm on 14 Oct and runs to 1:49pm on 14 Oct — 1 hours, 6 readings of heat. The fire is on day 2, so the first day is missing: nothing showed up from above until the fire was large enough and the sky over it clear enough for it to be seen. There is no long arc to draw yet. What follows is what has actually happened.

Animated map of the Columbia Center Mutual Aid Fire across the whole record, with a time bar along the bottom showing energy released and the local date.
The whole record, 8 frames at 1 hour a frame. The bar along the bottom is energy released; the moving line is the clock.

Hour by hour local time

Wed 12:00pmWed 1:00pm

Each bar is one hour of local time, sized by how much energy the fire gave off in it. This fire is too young for a day-against-day comparison to say anything, so the hours are shown instead.

Day by day 1 day of record

  1. Map for Wed 14 Oct: flames mark every place that gave off heat that day.

    Wed14 Octlatest

    First readings

    • 6 heat readings
    • Heat from 12:47pm to 1:49pm
    • Spread 1.0 miles from the recorded point at its furthest
    • Burning through the afternoon

How the record has moved

Each step is a change on the interagency incident record — acreage, containment or crews — with the date it was reported. No satellite reading is involved.

  1. Wednesday 14 October

    First reported at 150 acres

    150 ac

  2. Wednesday 14 October

    150 acres on record

    150 ac

No containment figure has been reported for it yet. No crew count has been published for it yet. It has grown from 150 acres when it was first written down to 150 now. Nothing has looked at it for 19 hours, and the record still lists it as active.