Despite the heavy rainfall that swept the Olympic Peninsula over the weekend, the Bear Gulch Fire remains ablaze and is still only 3% contained.
The human-caused fire started on July 6 and has burned through 8,368 acres as of Sunday. It’s primarily burning within the Olympic National Park near Lake Cushman.
Numerous roads, trails and campgrounds in the southeast portion of the park remain closed.
A weather system brought 3 inches of unseasonal rain to the peninsula on Friday. While the rainfall helped reduce the fire, it didn’t have the impact officials hoped it would because the moisture from the rain only reached the surface level, a Sunday update from the incident command staff said.
It did, however, cause an increase in smoke.
“The main concern (is) that we are forecasting increas