Firefighters have containment lines around Chelan Hills fire
Not much has changed with the Chelan Hills fire, Douglas County Sheriff Tyler Caille said.
The fire broke out after midnight on Saturday near mile marker 233 on Highway 97 and grew to 9,735 acres. The fire has stayed within the perimeter set up, and is 20% contained, he said.
DCSO continues to assess the fire's damage and look for any unaccounted-for members of the community. No additional missing persons reports or welfare checks have been filed since human remains were found in a burned car Sunday, Caille said.
The coroner's office is working to identify the remains, said Tanner Bateman, Douglas County coroner.
The area remains under a Level 3 "go now" evacuation order, with roadblocks maintained around McNeil Canyon, Northwest Road 20 and Beebe Ranch. Residents who can prove their address is within the roadblock are being allowed through to check on their properties.
Fire crews are working to keep the fire inside the perimeter as they deal with hot, dry weather and gusty winds from the red flag warning, said Jodi Walker, a spokesperson for the incident management team. Red flag warning conditions can contribute to wildland fire behavior.
Douglas County is still working to determine the extent of the fire's damage, including the number of homes and other structures lost.
Nine verified GoFundMe fundraisers show houses around Chelan have been destroyed in the fire. The Hobbit Inn, a hobbit-hole vacation property in Orondo, Washington, was also destroyed by the fire. Social media posts of other residents in the evacuation zone show partial damage.
Mike Papritz, the owner of Elevate Vineyards in Orondo, was one of the last residents to evacuate Saturday off the hill on Eagles Nest Road.
"Nothing bad was happening up until around noontime, when the winds shifted out of the west, directly moving to the northeast, and that's when things started just blowing up all over the place. Big smoke. We saw a fire on the ridge line," he said.
Papritz stayed at the vineyard until 2:30 that afternoon, when sheriffs came by the property to tell him the fire was right around the corner.
He could see the vineyard was OK at dusk from the bottom of the hill on a friend's property, but other homes and cabins nearby couldn't say the same, he said.
Papritz said the vineyard's damage is minimal compared to that of neighboring properties.
"Yes, half our vineyard has been damaged," he said. "But we were spared because we had a lot of defensible spaces around most of our larger structures."
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