Washington's active wildfires offer warning, state lands chief says

Amanda Zhou, The Seattle Times on Oct 2, 2025

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SEATTLE — Two wildfires burning east of the Cascade crest are now the state's largest, and serve as a reminder that, despite rainy, fall weather in Western Washington, fire season rages on.

Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove joined firefighters Wednesday in Cle Elum to give an update on conditions near Highway 97's Blewett Pass, which has been blocked since late September because of wildfires.

Two fires in the area, the Labor Mountain and Lower Sugarloaf, have burned around 120 square miles of forest and have forced some evacuations. No one has been hurt in the blazes.

At the Wednesday briefing, Upthegrove said fire seasons are growing longer because of climate change and renewed his pitch to state lawmakers to bolster funding for forest health and wildfire preparedness. The Legislature earlier this year axed about half of its expected wildfire preparedness budget, to about $60 million through the 2026 fiscal year.

This is an all-of-Washington issue, and investing in wildfire prevention and response is a core public safety function of government that saves money in the long run," Upthegrove said.

Wildfires across the state have burned through about 370 square miles, Upthegrove said, and the state has seen more fire starts this season compared to last.

This includes the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula, which has torched 31 square miles of rugged terrain in the Olympic National Park and has sporadically sent smoke into the Seattle area since early July.

Overall, this year and last year's fire seasons have landed under the 10-year average of 730 square miles burned. But this year has seen an uptick in the number of fire starts on average, with over 1,700, said Ryan Rodruck, a spokesperson with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Firefighting is expensive. The Labor Mountain and Lower Sugarloaf fires, sparked by lightning, each cost about $1 million a day to fight.

Upthegrove has warned fires will be larger and cost taxpayers more since DNR lost its biennium funding for wildfire resilience efforts.

In 2021, the Legislature budgeted $500 million over eight years — around $125 million a biennium — toward forest restoration and thinning, community resilience work like home wildfire assessments and wildfire response and preparedness. Upthegrove hopes the Legislature will restore the full funding for this biennium in its next session beginning in January.

At the news briefing, the incident commander for the Labor Mountain fire, Jeff Dimke, credited the funding for establishing community fuel breaks and prescribed fire projects near the active fire. Prescribed fires are intentionally set to thin out fuel or slash piles to prevent larger blazes.

"Prescribed fires are our best tool to minimize smoke in the long run and also maintain and try to keep the ecosystem intact. Fire has been a natural part of our ecosystem," Dimke said.

In addition to the reinstatement of forest health funding, DNR has requested $44.8 million to cover a gap between what was appropriated for fire suppression and the cost, which is forecast to be about $132.3 million by the end of the 2026 fiscal year, according to budget documents.

The high cost of fire suppression includes massive logistics operations of setting up the temporary facilities that support, feed and house firefighters in remote environments.

"There's literally an entire town that I'm looking at, and we build these things in the span of about 24 hours," Dimke said.

About 1,300 firefighters and 18 aircraft are working the Labor Mountain fire, he said. The Lower Sugarloaf fire has around 1,150 firefighters employed, said Tim Sampson, a deputy incident commander for the fire, which is around 48% contained.

Describing Alaska as "the only place with more steep, remote, inaccessible terrain" than the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Dimke said firefighters try to choose the most cost-effective places to go to suppress the fire while maximizing safety.

Around 567 homes are within the Labor Mountain fire's evacuation zone, he said. Dimke said while the Labor Mountain fire could potentially reach the edge of the Enchantments mountain range, the long-term threat to that region is "pretty low; not impossible, but not very likely.

Sampson said firefighters are trying to prepare for potential winds in the forecast.

Washington has seen record wildfires in recent years, with its second- and third-worst fire seasons in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest have destroyed hundreds of homes and structures, devalued timber sales, closed highways and foiled carbon sequestration plans.

Blewett Pass stretches between Leavenworth, Chelan County and Ellensburg, Kittitas County, and has been closed since late September with no estimated reopening time. The road is closed from milepost 178 to 149.

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(Seattle Times staff reporter Conrad Swanson contributed to this report.)