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News brief: Campfire blamed for hillside blaze north of Cinebar

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Someone forgot about Smokey Bear.

When 911 calls alerted firefighters to a glow in the Cinebar Hills, members of Lewis County Fire District 8 set out in the dark up a logging road and discovered a wildfire covering about two acres on extremely steep terrain.

And, they found the remnants of a campfire someone didn’t fully extinguish, according to Chief Duran McDaniel.

What began about midnight on Tuesday didn’t end for another 16 hours, he said.

The scene was about a mile up Forest Service Road 71, on the way to Newaukum Lake, he said. The small area surrounded by forest had been logged about four years earlier, and the campfire had been built some 10 feet away from a well-seasoned slash pile in what McDaniel called a landing zone.

“It appears people have using the area for target practice,” he said.

Firefighters did what they could to contain what was burning on Weyerhaeuser property while they waited for crews from the state Department of Natural Resources, McDaniel said.

DNR summoned three “convict crews” and three engine teams, he said.  Members of the fire district assisted by hauling tanker trucks of water through the night and into the following afternoon.

The chief said the DNR investigation indicated the campfire – without even a ring of rocks surrounding it – was probably used sometime since Sunday.

A burn ban goes into effect on Monday in Lewis County because of how much the vegetation has dried out. Exceptions are made for recreational fires in approved receptacles.

A similar burn ban statewide began July 1 on all forestland and other property that is protected by the state Department of Natural Resources.