Report details terrifying minutes for WA firefighters battling Chelan Hills Fire

ORONDO, Wash. - Engines were evacuated. Firefighters were burned. One engine careened hundreds of feet off a road.

A new incident report on the Chelan Hills Fire provides a minute-by-minute account of the dangerous conditions firefighters faced on July 4, when two crews were caught in separate close calls as the wildfire intensified.

The report includes photos, maps and detailed timelines showing how quickly conditions deteriorated.

Timeline:

According to a crew boss on the ground in Orondo, blue sky turned to falling ash in roughly 10 seconds.

What followed was a terrifying stretch of about 15 minutes.

3:35 p.m.: ‘Engine entrapped’

Things took a dangerous turn around 3:30 p.m., when the fire jumped McNeil Canyon Road.

At 3:35 p.m., the first crew heard a troubling message over the radio: "Engine entrapped."

Seconds later, ash and embers began raining down around them.

The crew boss desperately tried to reach someone over the radio, but channels were overwhelmed and the crew could not get through.

3:36 p.m.: Window explodes from the heat

At nearly the same time, a second crew was running into trouble of its own.

Surrounded by flames, visibility deteriorated.

Then, a window on one of the engines exploded from the heat.

Smoke filled the cab, and the driver suffered burns to his face and neck.

3:37 p.m.: Engine barrels 300 feet downhill

One minute later, another engine could no longer see the road.

It veered off, barreling roughly 300 feet downhill and knocking over trees along the way.

By 3:39 p.m., the firefighters abandoned the engine and took cover behind a building as the fire closed in.

3:44 p.m.: Crew crashes in thick smoke

Meanwhile, the first crew managed to make it through the flames.

But the smoke was so thick they crashed into a car they did not know was there.

One minute later, at 3:45 p.m., their own crew carrier caught fire.

Everyone bailed out and tried to extinguish the flames, but two of their fire extinguishers did not work.

Firefighters survive, but a grim discovery follows

All of the firefighters caught in the two close calls made it out alive.

But later, crews made a grim discovery near the area where the second engine had gone off the road.

Someone was found dead inside a car, later identified as 69-year-old Robert Lister.

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