The estimated size of the fire that burned through Yakima and Benton counties toward the Hanford nuclear reservation has been more than doubled to 273 square miles.
The fire spread little on Monday, according to the Northwest Incident Management Team assigned to the Range 12 Fire.
But once the smoke cleared enough for a helicopter to fly the perimeter of the fire with a global positioning system, a better estimate of the size of the fire was made. Fire officials increased the estimate from 110 square miles to 273 square miles late Monday.
The fire was just 10 percent contained Tuesday morning, but a large area had been burned on Rattlesnake Mountain and nearby land on the Hanford Reach National Monument to keep the fire from spreading to Benton City or the Hanford nuclear reservation. Fire perimeters in the area were patrolled overnight Monday.
Firefighters sacrificed the mountain, which is part of one of the last shrub steppe ecosystems in the Columbia Basin, to prevent a repeat of the 24 Command Fire in June 2000. It burned the mountain and spread across Hanford, threatening radioactive waste storage areas, and destroyed 11 homes in Benton City.