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Range 12 fire
Range 12 fire
Date(s)	July 30, 2016 through August 4, 2016; 8 years ago
Location	Benton County and Yakima County, Washington
Coordinates	46°35′13″N 119°58′37″W / 46.587°N 119.977°W
Statistics
Burned area	over 176,000 acres (71,000 ha)
Impacts
Damage	Unknown
Map
	Location of fire in Washington
Season
	← 2015 2017 →

The Range 12 fire was started on July 30, 2016 (local time) in eastern Washington at the Yakima Training Center east of Yakima, Washington near Moxee, Washington.^[1]^[2]^[3] It quickly grew to over 176,000 acres (71,000 ha) to cover parts of Yakima County and Benton County.^[4] The fire was the third in recent years to affect the area surrounding the Hanford Reach National Monument and the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve near Rattlesnake Ridge.^[5] The fire was eventually contained through the use of controlled burns on Rattlesnake Mountain in Benton County due to concerns that the fire was getting too close to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which had recently been compared to the Fukushima nuclear disaster by Newsweek magazine earlier in 2016.^[6]^[7] A lawsuit was filed by ranchers in the area due to loss of property, but was dismissed due to questions of jurisdiction.^[8]^[9]^[10] Even though there were no findings from the Anderson v. United States of America case, the dismissal document from May 21, 2019, points to a cause for the fire:^[10]

The Army training unit continued to engage in live fire training exercises through the afternoon on July 30, 2016. At approximately 4:40 p.m., one of the Army training unit's soldier's fired a machine gun at a target using tracer rounds. SJF ¶ 74. One of the tracer rounds ricocheted from the target area and landed on some brush, which started a brush fire. Id. The fire spread beyond the YTC and onto Plaintiffs' rangeland properties, causing property damage to Plaintiffs' cattle businesses.

References

^ Cary, Annette (July 31, 2016). "Fires burn across Eastern Washington, some Prosser-area residents evacuated". Tri-City Herald.
^ Worthington, Sarah (August 2, 2016). "Range 12 Fire: 90 percent contained,176,000 acres burned in Yakima, Benton Counties". KIMA-TV. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
^ "Photos: Up close at the Yakima Training Center fire". Yakima Herald-Republic. July 30, 2016. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
^ Cary, Annette (August 3, 2016). "Range 12 fire 90% contained, 176,600 acres of Yakima, Benton counties scorched". Yakima Herald-Republic. Retrieved August 23, 2016. Residents were told to evacuate their homes west of Prosser in the area of Ward Gap and Richards Roads early Sunday evening.
^ Cary, Annette (August 6, 2016). "Time needed for ravaged Hanford monument ecosystem to recover from third fire". Tri-City Herald. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
^ "To Prevent a Nuclear Disaster, Washington Firefighters Burned a Whole Mountain". Vice. August 3, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022. The raging inferno, called the Range 12 Fire, threatened to summit Washington's Rattlesnake Mountain, and creep down the other side toward the Hanford Nuclear Site, an aging nuclear production complex that sits along the Columbia River.
^ "Nuclear Waste Leaking at 'American Fukushima' in Northwest". Newsweek. May 3, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
^ "$15M lawsuit filed over wildfire that threatened Hanford". Tri-City Herald. January 26, 2018. Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
^ "Anderson et al v. United States of America et al". Justia Dockets & Filings. Archived from the original on April 22, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2022.
^ ^a ^b "Anderson v. United States, No. 1:18-cv-003011-SAB". casetext.com. May 21, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2022. from Anderson v. United States, No. 1:18-cv-003011-SAB, (E.D. Wash. May. 21, 2019) "The Army training unit continued to engage in live fire training exercises through the afternoon on July 30, 2016. At approximately 4:40 p.m., one of the Army training unit's soldier's fired a machine gun at a target using tracer rounds. SJF ¶ 74. One of the tracer rounds ricocheted from the target area and landed on some brush, which started a brush fire. Id. The fire spread beyond the YTC and onto Plaintiffs' rangeland properties, causing property damage to Plaintiffs' cattle businesses."

Other sources

Remote Sensing (journal)
- Ba, Rui; Song, Weiguo; Li, Xiaolian; Xie, Zixi; Lo, Siuming (February 6, 2019). "Integration of Multiple Spectral Indices and a Neural Network for Burned Area Mapping Based on MODIS Data". Remote Sensing. 11 (3): 326. Bibcode:2019RemS...11..326B. doi:10.3390/rs11030326. ISSN 2072-4292.
- Research about using satellite imagery to track fires on the ground. Much of their research was about the Range 12 fire.
University of Washington
- "Monitoring Impacts to Rare Plant Populations from Range 12 Fire - UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON". portal.nifa.usda.gov. Retrieved April 21, 2022. — research about potential rare (and possibly endangered) species near the Hanford Site that may have been impacted by the Range 12 fire.
KIMA-TV — Yakima, Washington
- "Range 12 Fire: 90 percent contained,176,000 acres burned in Yakima, Benton Counties". KIMA-TV. August 2, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
- This citation contains helpful pictures and a map, and points out that the fire started at the Yakima Training Center.
KEPR-TV
- "Range 12 Fire Map: Officials say 70,000 acres burning in Yakima, Benton Counties". KEPR-TV. August 1, 2016. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
- Link to map provided by KEPR-TV on August 1, when the fire was still out of control north of Sunnyside, Washington
Tri-City Herald
- "$15M lawsuit filed over wildfire that threatened Hanford". Tri-City Herald. January 26, 2018. Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
- Story about the lawsuit filed a couple of years after the fire.
WBUR-FM
- King, Anna (September 6, 2016). "Washington State Wildfire Destroys Sensitive Habitat On National Land". WBUR-FM / Northwest News Network. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
Yale University Press
- Jacobs, R.A. (2022). Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300230338.
- Quote from the book: "In the summer of 2016, numerous large wildfires threatened to spread across the Hanford Reservation. Most concerning was the Range 12 fire that spread from Grant and Yakima Counties into Benton County, where the sprawling nuclear site is located. The fire threatened to summit Rattlesnake Mountain and spread into the Hanford Nuclear Site itself."
Seattle Times
- "Yakima area wildfire is 90 percent contained". The Seattle Times. August 4, 2016. Archived from the original on August 6, 2016. Retrieved April 24, 2022. Yakima Herald-Republic
Yakima Herald-Republic - July 30, 2016
- "Photos: Up close at the Yakima Training Center fire". Yakima Herald-Republic. July 30, 2016. Archived from the original on April 24, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.