Larry Tucker stood near a window and looked out at his garden and the babbling Tieton River beyond it. Tucker is grateful the Trout Lodge, the motel and diner he owns in Rimrock Retreat, came through the Retreat Fire unscathed.
He's grateful that firefighters worked so hard to save so many of the buildings in the small town that was at the center of the Retreat Fire, which scorched more than 45,000 acres around the Tieton River Canyon after it started near a structure in Rimrock Retreat on July 23.
Hundreds of personnel were called in from around the country to bring the blaze under control, save homes and infrastructure along U.S. 12 and prevent the Retreat Fire from reaching down into the communities of Tieton and Cowiche.
Tucker is optimistic about the recovery — he sees new growth already sprouting — but as roads reopen and the firefighters work to finally put out the wildfire's embers, he is still waiting for a return to normalcy. Tucker walks over the wood floorboards past empty tables and plates in a dark dining room still deprived of electricity.
Power has yet to return to Rimrock Retreat and White Pass, leaving residents in the dark along the U.S. Highway 12 corridor.
"None of us expected to be out of business for this long," Tucker said.
As the flames recede in northwest Yakima County, officials and community members are coming together to figure out what comes next.
The Retreat Fire damaged critical infrastructure in its burn area, including roads, power lines and the 118-year-old Yakima Tieton canal. It also halted a popular late-summer river rafting season that usually draws people from around the Northwest.
Now, government officials and local businesses are preparing to deal with those effects in the days, months and years to come.
Government agencies look at the damage
Ryan Rodruck, a communications manager for DNR, said the fire's cause is still under investigation, but it was likely a structure-related fire that spread to wildland.
Joseph Landburg, a U.S. Forest Service assistant fire management officer, was fighting the fire when it first started on July 23. He said the blaze spread quickly, hopping the Tieton River and spreading up both canyon walls.
Local personnel quickly called for more support, bringing in a federal incident management team to provide more help.
Rodruck said DNR worked to make air resources like helicopters easily available this year, basing some in Yakima.
"It would have been a different outcome without them," Landburg said.
Rodruck said firefighters focused on protecting structures and critical infrastructure, like the Yakima Tieton canal. Only three structures — two of them residences, one of them an unoccupied USFS house — were lost in the fire. That's something residents praised firefighters for.
Now, a team of scientists and officials is analyzing the effects and hazards created by the fire.
Sienna McDonald is a Forest Service botanist working with that team and looking at what resources could be available in the next year to assist with fire recovery. That includes rebuilding infrastructure and protecting the landscape.
Some of that work includes assessing harm to local species, reseeding some areas and preventing invasive species from taking hold. McDonald noted that important species like whitebark pine, steelhead salmon and bull trout had habitat in the burned area, but said the fire did not threaten those species.
Rodruck said low intensity fire can be good for some trees, like ponderosa pines. It's areas of hot, high intensity fire that are concerning. They can create bare slopes prone to erosion and invasive species. Officials are still working to predict the threat of landslides or mudslides in the area.
Local workers are now working to increase culvert sizes to deal with more sediment, add signs at campsites and remove trees. Burned trees are dangerous and can fall without warning, which is why many parts of the U.S. 12 corridor are still closed to the public.
Rodruck added that pockets of the Retreat Fire could continue to burn until snow begins to fall in the winter.
"I'm always hesitant to say this fire is out, basically until it snows," he said. "We're not out of fire season, by any stretch of the imagination."
Landburg said Forest Service staff will continue to patrol the burned area.
Local infrastructure rebuilding
There is a lot of infrastructure that winds its way up the banks of the Tieton River, including the Benton Rural Electric Association's powerlines, the Washington State Department of Transportation roads and a critical canal bringing water to Upper Valley irrigators and communities.
Much of that is still being repaired.
"We've been up there seven days, 12-plus hours a day," said Troy Berglund, a general manager and vice president at the Benton Rural Electric Association. "We are looking at restoring power by the second week of September, maybe earlier."
Between 400 and 500 customers in the area are still without electricity, Berglund said. There is no way to reroute power to the area, so people have had to wait while Benton REA repairs powerlines that stretch up the canyon's steep walls.
Berglund said helicopters are being used to set poles and drop supplies. There's no other way to access some of the power lines and trim nearby trees.
"It is some of the most challenging territory for power lines," he said.
Despite the difficult circumstances — businesses like the Trout Lodge can't operate without electricity — customers have remained supportive. Tucker sees workers bringing in new power poles regularly and praised those efforts.
"Members have been absolutely tremendous in terms of their appreciation," Berglund said. "I think that speaks volumes for our members and the people who live up there."
Power lines are not the only infrastructure expected to soon be completed. WSDOT is working to around signs and guardrails that were damaged in the fire.
Summer Derrey, a WSDOT public information officer, said workers are replacing around 3,000 guardrails and 16 signs. They are also working to cut down trees that could fall on the road.
That work will be completed by mid-September, she said. Another WSDOT project, replacing a culvert on U.S. 12 near Rimrock Lake, is under construction but is not fire-related, Derry said.
Business comes to a halt
Late summer is typically a busy time for the Trout Lodge.
"We lost at least six weekends in the summer and this is the time we hope to make a few bucks," Tucker said.
His business has been closed since July 23, when the fire started. It was tough to lose a long weekend like Labor Day, Tucker said, when thousands of customers will pass through the area.
A lot of people have called to express support. Some couldn't get through due to power outages; Tucker wants them to know that the Trout Lodge is OK and will open again when the power returns.
He's grateful to still have his building and his home. Trout Lodge will endure, he said, partly because of its smaller size.
"We're small, so we can roll with it a little better," he said.
Still, it's impossible to open while the power is out. His kitchen needs electricity for various appliances.
Basic needs, like water, are also a challenge while electricity is scarce. Most Rimrock Retreat residents use well water, Tucker said, and those wells don't function without electricity. Most people in town are using bottled water for now.
One of the Trout Lodge's biggest source of customers is river rafters who make their way down the Tieton during the flip flop, but this year's rafting season was canceled during the fire after officials decided not to issue permits for rafting. Downed trees and logs make the river more dangerous to raft.
Losses for local businesses and the rafting industry could stretch into the millions of dollars, rafting companies said.
What's going on downstream?
The city of Yakima gets its water from a treatment plant less than a dozen miles downstream of the Retreat Fire's edge.
Mike Shane oversees water and irrigation for the city and is keeping his eye on the effects of the fire as well.
Wildfires can lead to increased runoff and erosion as hillsides are stripped of plants and roots that help keep water from running away. In 2023, increased dirt and sediment in the Naches River from the 2021 Schneider Springs Fire forced officials to shut down the city's water treatment plant.
In August of this year, city staff filled up reservoirs and shut down the plant preemptively, expecting turbidity to increase when thunderstorms hit the area.
"When we shut the plant down, we've got four groundwater wells to supplement," Shane said.
Those wells can help supplement the water supply when the treatment plant has to be shut off. However, they cannot provide water for the whole city during peak water demand in the summer, Shane said.
For now, he added, it's mostly the waiting game for city water staff, who will see what fall rains and spring melt brings.
Typical rainstorms aren't bad, Shane said. It's the heavy, isolated thunderstorms that cause problems. The new burn area will have its own, unique effects on the river, he added, and officials will have to see what patterns emerge this season and in the coming years.
"For a number of years, we'll have to keep an eye on weather patterns," Shane said. "It will be a new thing for us to track and manage our system."
Canal looms large
The Yakima Tieton Canal brings water to much of the Cowiche Uplands, irrigating crops and supplying businesses around Cowiche and Tieton.
During the fire, the canal was under threat as boulders and trees fell around it. Shutoffs are still occurring as staff from the Yakima Tieton Irrigation District work to make repairs and improvements.
Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney, who represents the region in county government, has been laser-focused on the 118-year-old canal. The county is still in a state of emergency due to the threats posed to the canal by falling trees and rocks, as well as erosion to the hillside that could bring the whole thing tumbling down.
"If the canal completely falls off the side of the cliff, it's about a $2 billion estimated loss per year," McKinney said.
There are 20,000 acres irrigated by the canal, roughly $750 million of agricultural production per year, McKinney said. The effects of losing the canal would also hit businesses and residences and could impact emergency response services, which rely on canal water to pressurize local fire hydrants.
McKinney said a team of county, state and local officials is responding to problems on a daily basis, looking at work that could be done before the end of the year and planning for the long term.
Eventually, McKinney believes the risk to the canal will have to be lowered by building a new one. That will require buy-in from state and federal leaders.
"There's no doubt in my mind, it has to be replaced," she said.
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