It had the appearance of a typical wildfire.
Firefighters in yellow-and-green protective gear worked to contain flames as they burned through brush and trees. They’d back off as dead trees started burning from the inside and began dropping limbs and parts of their trunks to the ground, raising clouds of ash and igniting fresh fires.
But this scene Sept. 6 wasn’t in a remote forest. It was less than 2 miles from the heart of downtown Yakima, along the Yakima Greenway near the banks of the Naches River. The fire near Gordon Road was one of at least six suspicious fires along the pathway that Yakima firefighters have dealt with this year.
“It’s a very dangerous area to be using fire at all,” said Yakima Fire Capt. Jeff Pfaff, adding that fire crews have responded to more than the usual number of fires along the path.