Posted on 07/18/2014 7:12:35 PM PDT by hoagy62
PATEROS — Residents returning here Friday picked through the ash and rubble of homes incinerated the night before by raging wildfire. Baby pictures, gone. Family antiques, gone. Grandma’s recipes, gone.
In a half-block line of charred homes — mostly burned down to their foundations — each resident echoed their neighbors: “We lost everything.”
More than 30 homes were destroyed here Thursday night by wind-whipped flames racing down a grass-and-sage bluff and into this river town of 650 residents. Nearby, flying embers jumped the Methow River to torch another 40 homes along the Alta Lake Golf Course. An estimated 20 homes also burned further up the Methow River.
On Friday, the town remained deep in smoke with ghostly chimneys rising from piles of metal roofing, twisted refrigerators, melted boats, smoldering fence rails and burned auto carcasses. Clusters of blackened grapes still hung on scorched vines; charred apricots dangled from fire-stripped branches. Firefighters tamped down spot fires burning in grassy patches between homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at wenatcheeworld.com ...
The fires are really bad. If it's not the fires, it's the smoke. Most of eastern Washington is covered in haze and smoke.
Saw it on the local news tonight - terrible damage, dozens of homes gone. Family friends used to have a cattle ranch at Mazama before the North Cascades Highway was built - been through there many times.
We have friends who live there...they and their neighbors house were saved...it IS really bad.
that part of Washington gets very dry...infact, most of Washington State is on the dry side.....people think Washington is Seattle green, but its not....even Seattle can get dry and when it does, the lawns go brown because they don’t have sprinkler systems like the east and central areas....
That is very sad. My condolences to these people.
It's as pretty there as anywhere in the world.
And North Idaho and western Montana. It is some of the thickest smoke from fires in Washington that I can recall.
My oldest son lives in Post Falls. He told me a few days ago that it was very smoky.
M4L
Yes...I am from Washington. ..Winthrop is one of our favorite places...hearing they will be without power for weeks.
Actually power is gone for the WHOLE area...Pateros to Winthrop
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