User:Kline/range12

Range 12 Fire

Range 12 Fire
Date(s)	July 30 – August 8, 2016
Location	Benton County and Yakima County, Washington
Coordinates	46.587°N 119.977°W / 46.587; -119.977
Statistics
Burned area	176,600 acres (71,500 ha; 275.9 sq mi)
Impacts
Damage	$1.7 million (equivalent to $2.2 million in 2023)
Ignition
Cause	Live fire exercise
Map

The Range 12 Fire was a wildfire that burned 176,600 acres (71,500 ha) in Benton and Yakima County, Washington, United States, from July 30 to August 8, 2016. No injuries or fatalities resulted from the fire, although one outbuilding was damaged. The fire threatened the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and burnt parts of the Hanford Reach National Monument and the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve. Over 400 personnel from various federal, state, and local agencies and organizations responded to contain and extinguish the fire, which costed $1.7 million (equivalent to $2.2 million in 2023). The wildfire was the third largest in the 2016 United States wildfire season, behind the Anderson Creek Fire and the Pioneer Fire.

The fire was caused by a round of ammunition from machine gun fire that landed and ignited brush at the Yakima Training Center during a live fire exercise. Hot, dry, and windy conditions in the area caused the fire to spread rapidly until it was primarily contained on August 2. Following the fire in 2018, a lawsuit was filed by ranchers in the area whose property was damaged by the fire against the personnel at the Yakima Training Center, but was dismissed due to questions of jurisdiction.

Background

Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle of the Northwestern United States, but human-induced climate change has caused them to increase in number, destructiveness, duration, and frequency. Fire suppression efforts can also have the contradictory effect of worsening the effects of fires that do occur. The Range 12 Fire was one of 1,272 wildfires that burned 293,717 acres (118,863 ha) in Washington in 2016. The National Interagency Fire Center predicted a typical wildfire season for the state of Washington. Despite an early start, the 2016 season was milder in both total wildfires and acreage burned compared to the 2015 wildfire season. Prior to the live fire exercise on July 30, the National Weather Service in Pendleton, Oregon had issued a red flag warning the day before for high wind gusts and low relative humidity in the area.

Fire

At approximately 4:40 pm (PST), July 30, 2016, during a live fire exercise at the Yakima Training Center, a bullet from machine-gun fire had ricocheted and landed on brush, igniting the fire.

Other sources

• Remote Sensing (journal)
  • Ba, Rui; Song, Weiguo; Li, Xiaolian; Xie, Zixi; Lo, Siuming (February 6, 2019). "Integration of Multiple Spectral Indices and a Neural Network for Burned Area Mapping Based on MODIS Data". Remote Sensing. 11 (3): 326. Bibcode:2019RemS...11..326B. doi:10.3390/rs11030326. ISSN 2072-4292.
  • Research about using satellite imagery to track fires on the ground. Much of their research was about the Range 12 fire.
• University of Washington
  • "Monitoring Impacts to Rare Plant Populations from Range 12 Fire - UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON". portal.nifa.usda.gov. Retrieved April 21, 2022. — research about potential rare (and possibly endangered) species near the Hanford Site that may have been impacted by the Range 12 fire.
• KIMA-TV — Yakima, Washington
  • "Range 12 Fire: 90 percent contained,176,000 acres burned in Yakima, Benton Counties". KIMA-TV. August 2, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  • This citation contains helpful pictures and a map, and points out that the fire started at the Yakima Training Center.
• KEPR-TV
  • "Range 12 Fire Map: Officials say 70,000 acres burning in Yakima, Benton Counties". KEPR-TV. August 1, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  • Link to map provided by KEPR-TV on August 1, when the fire was still out of control north of Sunnyside, Washington
• Tri-City Herald
  • "$15M lawsuit filed over wildfire that threatened Hanford". Tri-City Herald. January 26, 2018. Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  • Story about the lawsuit filed a couple of years after the fire.
• WBUR-FM
  • King, Anna (September 6, 2016). "Washington State Wildfire Destroys Sensitive Habitat On National Land". WBUR-FM / Northwest News Network. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
• Yale University Press
  • Jacobs, R.A. (2022). Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300230338.
  • Quote from the book: "In the summer of 2016, numerous large wildfires threatened to spread across the Hanford Reservation. Most concerning was the Range 12 fire that spread from Grant and Yakima Counties into Benton County, where the sprawling nuclear site is located. The fire threatened to summit Rattlesnake Mountain and spread into the Hanford Nuclear Site itself."
• Seattle Times
  • "Yakima area wildfire is 90 percent contained". The Seattle Times. August 4, 2016. Archived from the original on August 6, 2016. Retrieved April 24, 2022. Yakima Herald-Republic
• Yakima Herald-Republic - July 30, 2016
  • "Photos: Up close at the Yakima Training Center fire". Yakima Herald-Republic. July 30, 2016. Archived from the original on April 24, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.

Category:2016 Washington (state) wildfires Category:July 2016 events in the United States Category:August 2016 events in the United States