The Eagle Creek fire now covers almost 35,600 acres and is 11 percent contained -- a jump in both acreage and containment from last week.
The acreage growth is due to natural progression of the blaze, areas consumed by burnout operations and better mapping, fire spokesman Jim Whittington said Tuesday. He said the areas of containment are along the Interstate 84 corridor and on the western tip of the fire, which has been burning since Sept. 2.
"Where we designate containment in the future is probably more important than the actual percentage of containment because ... we're not going to reach 100 percent on this fire until we get some significant winter weather event," he said.
That's because firefighters can't access parts of the fire that are burning in hazardous terrain.
Crews worked Tuesday to strengthen containment lines along the I-84 corridor and on the fire's southeastern and eastern edges.
The seven-day forecast shows rain is anticipated early next week in the western Columbia River Gorge. A half to 1 inch is expected to fall in the western gorge late Sunday night through Tuesday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tyree Wilde.
Many Multnomah and Hood River counties residents remain under evacuation notices of varying severity. Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese told a crowd at a community meeting Monday that the agency hoped to let evacuees return to their homes soon. If fire lines hold as winds shift in the coming days, he said, deputies may allow staged re-entry to evacuated areas.
About 170 people are still being served at a pair of shelters, said American Red Cross spokeswoman Monique Dugaw. One of the shelters is in Stevenson, Washington, and the other moved from Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham to Harvest Christian Church in Troutdale early Tuesday afternoon.
I-84 remains closed between Hood River and Troutdale because of fire danger and falling rocks, Oregon Department of Transportation officials said. Inspections have shown little damage to bridges and culverts along the highway.
Workers so far have removed about 2,500 trees in danger of tumbling onto the highway, officials said Monday.
Officials on Tuesday afternoon said the Columbia Gorge Express bus would no longer operate this year. The service, which was canceled last weekend and had two more weekends scheduled, runs between the Gateway Transit Center in Portland and Rooster Rock State Park and Multnomah Falls.
The U.S. Forest Service has also prohibited most people from entering a large swath of the Oregon side of the gorge. The order applies to anyone trying to use the area other than Bonneville Power Administration employees, Army Corps of Engineer staff, firefighters and fish hatchery workers.
Whittington said he saw much less smoke while traveling through the gorge Tuesday morning than he had during the past few days.
He said officials will be actively monitoring for an uptick in fire behavior, especially in the Herman Creek area near Cascade Locks, as breezy and dry conditions pick up between 2 and 5 p.m.
Despite the windy and dry weather, Hood River County sheriff's officials don't expect increased fire activity to threaten Cascade Locks Tuesday evening.
After that, he said, fire officials will watch for a cold front from the west that's expected to push dry air out of the gorge. High temperatures in the 60s and 70s fill out the western gorge's seven-day forecast.
A lot of areas that have burned, Whittington said, will recover from the fire within a couple years. In other areas, the signs of the blaze will linger for longer.
"The part of me that's vacationed in Hood River with my family and hiked the gorge and visited a bunch of waterfalls looks at it and says, 'You know, it's never going to quite match those memories again,'" he said. "But the fire guy in me, who's seen a lot of fires, is looking at this and thinking, 'This is not so bad.'"
-- Jim Ryan
jryan@oregonian.com
503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Samantha Matsumoto and Noelle Crombie of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report