About all that’s left of the Newberry family’s belongings is some pictures and a computer tower.
Their home is gone. There is only rubble left.
“It’s just surreal, sad,” Keith Newberry said Tuesday after a fast-moving wall of flames gutted his home in Wenatchee, Washington.
The 44-year-old road foreman for the county public works department became emotional when thinking about his youngest daughter, one of his three children.
“She doesn’t even have a swimsuit,” he said.
The fire in central Washington state has charred about 3,000 acres and devoured 24 homes. It was just 10% contained as of Tuesday afternoon, officials said. Three fire fighters have been injured since the fire began Sunday.
The fire also has damaged four businesses, officials said Tuesday at a press conference. About 4,000 homes remain under a Level 2 evacuation order, meaning residents should leave or be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
The weather forecast offers no help. Temperatures are expected to break 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day for the rest of the week, and each day’s forecast predicts prevalent sunshine.
With the well-above-average tempertures, the fire shows no signs of slowing, Wenatchee Mayor Frank Kuntz said.
“We’re worried now about what’s going to happen next,” Kuntz said, noting that hundreds of firefighters were working to battle the blaze.
Jon Dominguez described the fire to CNN affiliate KIRO as Jon Dominguez “a big orange glow, kind of a fireball — and a lot of black smoke billowing.” His neighbor Sue Gavin told the Seattle station that her home was fine. The fire jumped around, she said.
One resident told CNN affiliate KOMO that he was in California when the fire started. Vern Smith was able to get home and save his pets, but everything was gone now, but the brickwork of his home.
“Everybody’s safe, and the animals are good,” Smith told the station Monday night. “We’ve got insurance.”
For hours on Monday, many of the town’s 33,000 residents faced a new threat — an ammonia leak — after embers caught a recycling plant on fire, sending smoke rising from the facility. But emergency management officials in Chelan County, Washington, later advised residents that the ammonia had dissipated and was no longer an issue.
The fire began Sunday afternoon outside Wenatchee, but was burning within the city limits late Sunday night, Rich Magnussen of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said.
Officials are referring to it as the Sleepy Hollow Fire because the blaze started on Sleepy Hollow Road.
“It was intense, large embers blowing everywhere, roofs catching on fire, vegetation around the house, just spreading from house to house, and the firefighters were doing everything they could to keep it contained to the structures that were involved, and keep it away from the uninvolved structures,” Mike Burnett, Chelan County fire chief, told reporters.
The cause of the fire was unknown, but temperatures in the region have topped 100 degrees for days, and rainfall has been scarce.
The Sleepy Hollow Fire is one of four active wildfires in Washington, according to InciWeb, which is an interagency incident reporting website.