Pioneer Fire Dramatically Slowing But Containment Levels Remain Unchanged

After almost 80 days on the landscape, the Pioneer Fire on the northern shores of Lake Chelan appears to be losing a lot of its momentum.

In the days following its move beyond the town of Stehekin, activity associated with the blaze has greatly diminished, with very minimal growth.

Fire information officer, Lori Wisehart, says much of the trend is due to a system of cooler and wetter weather that pushed through the region over the weekend.

"With the recent storm that passed through, over an inch of rain fell over the fire area, and that has really helped in further moderating fire activity."

Although six helicopters are still actively working the fire, water drops have been halted in recent days due to the wetting rains and most are being used for reconnaissance and monitoring purposes.

While fire managers are reporting the presence of hot spots within the fire's footprint, they add the flanks of the blaze have been far less active and don't appear to be spreading.

Despite this fact, the fire's containment level has remained unchanged at 23%, and Wisehart says that figure will likely not increase too dramatically in the week ahead because of how the system for gauging containment levels works.

"In order to be considered 'contained', firefighters have to be sure that the fire will no longer spread. A lot of the perimeter of the fire is up at really high elevations in remote and steep terrain that's inaccessible, so it's hard to know if it will still spread or not. So while we haven't seen a lot of fire activity, we don't consider that contained until we're sure there's no potential for spread."

The Pioneer Fire is officially listed at 38,735 acres as of Monday (August 26) morning.

The blaze, which officially sparked from unknown causes on June 8, could see an uptick in activity by this weekend, when hotter and dry weather is expected to return to the region.