The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

By mid-September, there was no one left to call. The West, with its thousands of federal, state, and local fire engines and crews, had been tapped out.

Wildfires across the West had consumed the labor of all available wildland firefighters, and though there were fewer fires burning, those fires were larger and more difficult to contain. They consumed 13 million acres -— an area almost the siz...