AP article: Hanford wildfire crosses river and strikes 25homes

["Jim Hardeman" <Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us>]

The following AP article was posted this morning.

Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@dnr.state.ga.us 

===============

Hanford wildfire crosses river and strikes 25 homes 

Thursday, June 29, 2000

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

RICHLAND -- A fast-moving wildfire racing across the Hanford Nuclear Reservation jumped the Yakima River late yesterday and burned 25 homes in rural parts of Benton County, officials said.

Residents of Benton City and portions of West Richland were told to evacuate their homes as the fire, which had consumed more than 100,000 acres, continued to rage out of control.

"Multiple structures have been burned," Michael Minette, of the Hanford Joint Information Center, said last night. There were no reports of injuries.

The fire briefly threatened a Hanford reservation laboratory containing radioactive waste earlier in the day before winds pushed the flames south and east.

"There are no known radiological releases as a result of the fire at this time," said Keith Klein, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford office.

Several state highways were closed because of flames and smoke.

Some 300 firefighters battled the flames along state Route 240. The state ordered 100 more firefighters and 40 engines from

other counties to head to the scene.

The Red Cross set up emergency shelters at Richland High School and Southridge High School in nearby Kennewick to accept evacuees.

Earlier, the flames crossed Route 240 in three places, pushing into the 200 West Area of Hanford, where waste is stored from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.

That prompted the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the former nuclear weapons production site, to declare an emergency. The highway, which crosses the reservation, was closed.

State Route 24 was closed at the junction with Route 240, state transportation spokeswoman Clarissa Lundeen said. Also closed were routes 224 and 225 in Benton City and the Vernita Bridge over the Columbia River.

On the reservation, the fire burned in the vicinity of the 222 S Building, an analytical laboratory containing some nuclear waste, and a mile from the Central Waste Complex, where solid wastes are stored.

"All Hanford facilities are in safe status," Minette said late last night.

Earlier in the day, about 1,700 people who worked at the 200 West Area were sent home or told not to report for work. Several workers complained of respiratory problems from the smoke and two went to a local hospital for treatment, Fluor Hanford spokesman Michael Turner said. Fluor Hanford is a Hanford reservation contractor.

About 65 people formed a skeleton crew in the area last night, Minette said.

The fire, started Tuesday by a fatal auto accident, has been burning in arid sagebrush that makes up most of the 560-square-mile reservation.

The 200 West Area contains some of the huge underground tanks that contain Hanford's most dangerous radioactive wastes. None of those tanks was threatened, Minette said.

But an anti-nuclear group warned that the fire could burn radioactive soils and spew contaminated particles into the air.

"We urge state officials to independently monitor to protect the public and firefighters from the hazards of airborne radioactive contaminated particles," said Gerald Pollet, director of Heart of America Northwest.

Earlier this month, the federal government warned that radioactive-contaminated soil from the Los Alamos National Laboratory could flush into the Rio Grande River after a fire raced through the New Mexico site.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, responding to a DOE request, agreed to send airplanes and helicopters from Boise to drop fire retardant on the Hanford flames, Minette said. Those flights will begin today, he said.

The fire blackened both slopes of the Rattlesnake Hills and threatened wheat fields.

Temperatures in the area hit 100 degrees yesterday.


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