(18 Aug 2015) This scenic lakeside town in the Cascade Mountains counts on money from summer visitors, but many tourists fled after large wildfires erupted last week that burned dozens of homes and threaten many more.
Mike Steele, director of the Lake Chelan Chamber of Commerce, said it's too early to determine the economic impact of the lost tourist dollars. However he said it would be "significant."
"We're working hard to get our feet back on the ground," Steele said, noting that many of the people who would serve tourists have either had to leave or lost homes.
The several large fires burning near the town of Chelan have scorched more than 155 square miles and destroyed an estimated 75 homes and businesses Friday and Saturday, officials said. Scores of homes remain threatened, and mandatory evacuation orders remained in effect for more than 2,900 people in the Chelan area.
Chelan Fruit lost one of its major fruit-packing warehouses in Chelan to wildfire on Friday. The warehouse contained 1.8 million pounds of apples and employed about 800 people, said Mac Riggan, director of marketing for the company.
The employees are being sent to Chelan Fruit's other facilities in the region, Riggan said. "Our other plant in Chelan is fully operational," he said.
Washington is by far the nation's largest apple producer, and the industry produced more than 140 million cartons of apples last year, of which perhaps 6 million remain in warehouses, Riggan said.
"It's not a major loss to the industry," Riggan said. "It is to us."
Washington farmers grossed about $2 billion from the apple crop last year, and late-season apples tend to sell at a discount as buyers are waiting for new fruit, he said.
The air was clouded with smoke in Spokane, about 150 miles east of the Chelan fire, on Monday. Air quality was expected to remain in the "unhealthy for sensitive groups" range for at least the next couple of days because of the Chelan fire and other fires, according to the Spokane Regional Health District, which serves the metropolitan area of nearly 500,000 people.
So many fires are burning across the West that the National Interagency Fire Center announced Monday that 200 active-duty military troops were being called in to help. They will be sent to a fire on Aug. 23.
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