Investigators suspect human activity, rather than lightning, sparked a grassland fire that has destroyed at least 29 homes near the eastern slopes of the Cascades in central Washington, reports Reuters.
The so-called Sleepy Hollow fire, which has scorched nearly 3,000 acres since erupting Sunday on a drought-parched hillside west of the city of Wenatchee, continued to smolder as more than 300 firefighters gained ground on the flames.
As of Wednesday, crews had carved containment lines around nearly half the blaze’s perimeter and were conducting “mop-up” operations in areas where flames had been substantially subdued, said Josie Williams, a spokeswoman for the fire command.
She said the tally of residences known to have been lost in the fire had risen to 29, five more than were counted on Tuesday.
Several businesses in downtown Wenatchee, a city of about 33,000 people, also were destroyed or badly damaged, including a recycling center, a farm chemical distributor and two fruit-packing warehouses, officials said.
Although the blaze followed a large number of lightning strikes in the region, investigators have since ruled out lightning as the fire’s origin, deeming it to be human-caused instead, said Eileen Ervin, an emergency management official with the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office.
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