A lightning-started fire has burned 172,000 acres of Washington’s Cascades

The Little Giant Fire had burned 172,705 acres of Washington’s Cascades and stood 81% contained as of September 16, 2026, more than two months after lightning first sparked it in the Chiwawa River drainage on July 15. What began as a single lightning strike about 30 miles northwest of Leavenworth grew into one of the largest wildfires in state history, jumping a mile-wide lake, triggering a county emergency declaration and drawing firefighters from three countries before crews finally got the upper hand.

The scale of the response tracked the scale of the fire. Washington’s own National Guard flew nearly six weeks of continuous water drops over the burn, while international crews from Australia and New Zealand worked alongside American hand crews in terrain that one incident commander called some of the toughest in the country to fight fire in.

Lightning over the Chiwawa ignites a summer-long burn

The fire ignited in the Chiwawa River valley on the Wenatchee River Ranger District of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, roughly 30 miles northwest of Leavenworth, according to the incident page on InciWeb, the federal government’s wildfire tracking system. It grew quickly through the rest of July, reaching nearly 23,000 acres by July 27 and producing a pyrocumulus cloud that was visible as far away as Seattle, more than 100 miles to the west, according to reporting compiled on the fire’s growth.

By early August the fire had jumped nearly a mile across Lake Chelan and ballooned past 50,000 acres, prompting Chelan County to declare a state of emergency on August 4 with more than 1,000 people actively fighting the blaze. The following day, air quality in Leavenworth spiked to more than seven times the traditional index maximum of 500, forcing transit shutdowns under state labor safety rules once readings exceeded 849.

A No. 2 national priority as it neared 150,000 acres

By late August the Little Giant Fire had become the second-largest wildfire burning in Washington and the No. 2 priority fire in the entire country, trailing only a blaze in Oregon, according to KOMO News. More than 6,000 structures around Lake Chelan, the Chiwawa area and Entiat were considered threatened as the fire pushed through rugged, heavily timbered terrain with few natural barriers to slow it.

“This terrain out here is some of the toughest terrain to fight fire in,” Tim Ritchy, the fire’s incident commander with California Complex Incident Management Team 5, told KOMO News. “It just ran across the slopes through the unburned areas, the natural timber stands where there were no natural barriers to really slow the fire spread.” At the time, 1,857 personnel were assigned to the fire, including 240 active-duty Army soldiers and 90 firefighters from New Zealand working alongside Australian crews under an international mutual aid agreement coordinated through the National Interagency Fire Center.

Washington National Guard’s six-week air campaign

Washington Army National Guard aviation teams flew 474.7 hours and completed 2,044 water bucket drops, delivering 1,943,269 gallons of water over 44 days of sustained operations that also covered five other fires burning across central and eastern Washington that summer, according to the U.S. Army’s account of the mission. Ten Guard hand crews spent 28 days on the fire line, clearing more than 34 miles of terrain and building over 13,800 feet of hand line before the mission wound down on September 4.

“This response demonstrated the strength of our joint force and our ability to adapt as conditions and mission requirements changed across the state,” said Col. Carrie Wentzel, director of joint operations for the Washington National Guard, after crews stood down. Lt. Col. Adam Hanisch, the Guard’s state aviation officer, credited the maintainers, fuelers and flight operations personnel who kept aircraft airborne through high altitudes, heavy smoke and congested airspace around the fire.

81% contained, after 172,705 acres

By September 16, InciWeb listed the fire’s containment at 81%, with the mapped perimeter at 172,705 acres, a footprint larger than the city of Chicago. The growth from the nearly 23,000 acres recorded in late July to more than seven times that size by mid-September illustrates how quickly a single lightning strike in dry, steep timber can outrun the crews sent to stop it, even with a National Guard aviation wing, hundreds of contract firefighters and international reinforcements all working the same fire simultaneously.

Containment lines have held through September, but fire officials have not declared the Little Giant Fire fully out, and the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest has kept closure orders in place around the burn scar as crews continue mop-up work in the steep drainages above the Chiwawa and Wenatchee rivers.

The fire’s final size still leaves it well short of Washington’s largest wildfire on record, but the speed of its growth, from a single lightning strike to a six-figure acreage total in barely three weeks, is part of why state and federal agencies pointed to it repeatedly through August as an example of how quickly dry, steep timber can turn a small ignition into a months-long mobilization. For the communities around Lake Chelan, Plain and the Chiwawa drainage, the closure orders that remain in place are a more immediate reminder that a fire listed as 81% contained is not the same thing as a fire that is finished.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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