Clark Fire nears containment.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Clark Fire northeast of Lowell was declared 70 percent contained Sunday and should be fully contained by Wednesday, fire officials said.

The estimated cost of fighting the 2-week-old fire has climbed to $8.5 million. The fire has burned just less than 5,000 acres.

The Northwest Oregon Interagency Incident Management Team will turn over formal management of the fire to a Blue Mountain Area Team at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

As the fire approaches containment, crews are being released home or assigned to other fires throughout the West, officials said.

Elsewhere, the 18 Fire near Bend was declared fully contained Saturday night. The fire started Wednesday and had burned more than 3,800 acres.

In California, a 4,000-acre blaze raged Sunday in the Modoc National Forest just south of the Oregon border as erratic winds generated walls of flame that consumed grassland, sage and juniper, authorities said.

As of late Sunday afternoon, the fire in Modoc County remained out of control, according to Cathleen Thompson of the U.S. Forest Service. She said no structures were threatened by the blaze and no injuries had been reported.

The official cause of the fire, first reported Saturday, was unknown. Officials said the blaze may have been started by one of the more than 7,000 lightning strikes that have hit the area in the past couple of days.

At least 300 firefighters were battling the blaze along with three water-dropping helicopters and one air tanker.

In Washington, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board on Sunday took their first close look at the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed while fighting the McGinnis Flats fire, killing the pilot.

Randall Harmon, 44, of Grants Pass was the only one on board the Kaman K-1200 when it went down Friday while dropping water on the fire.

Investigators with the Washington State Patrol were helping the NTSB chart the distribution of the wreckage, which could shed light on what caused the helicopter to crash.

Superior Helicopter LLC based in Grants Pass owned the aircraft.

Officials said it could take crash investigators six months to determine what caused the helicopter to go down.

Harmon, an experienced helicopter pilot, was the first person killed fighting wildfires in Washington this year. His death came three days after two helitack firefighters in Idaho were killed when they were overrun by flames in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

The McGinnis Flats fire started July 18 and has burned about 2,233 acres on the Colville Indian Reservation. It remained about 70 percent contained on Sunday. There were more 600 firefighters working the fire.