Up to a half-inch of rain fell Sunday on western areas of the 90,000-acre B and B Complex Fire, and while other spots got little or no rain, cooler weather and higher humidities helped crews push the nearly 3-week-old blaze to 50 percent containment.

The fire had burned 90,367 acres, officials said Sunday night, and the large army of firefighters and support workers held strong at 2,258 personnel. The cost of battling the wildfire, which began Aug. 19 as two separate blazes, has risen to $21.6 million. And still, a full containment date hasn’t been set, and the cause of the fires remains under investigation.

East of the Cascades, the Metolius River Basin got about .10 inch of rain, while the northeast section of the formerly separate Booth Fire didn’t get any moisture, officials said. The fire kept burning actively Sunday, but the cooler temperatures and higher humidity levels did moderate fire behavior, allowing crews to use direct-attack tactics.

The new incident commander, Kim Martin, spoke to Camp Sherman evacuees at Sunday’s daily briefing at a Sisters church, warning that despite the rain and cooldown, the dry, dead timber still poses a threat of extreme fire behavior. Mark Foster of Jefferson County Search and Rescue said they are evaluating the criteria to use in deciding when residents – evacuated twice in the past two weeks – again would be able to return home.

No one is saying that the weekend’s welcome cooling and rain will completely douse the blaze, but all consider it a big improvement over the hot, dry weather crews have endured on a nearly constant basis since the fires began.

Sunday’s rainfall was evident in a Webcam view of the rainy Hoodoo Ski Area parking lot, while temperatures held in the chilly 40s up on Hoodoo Butte.

Temperatures indeed cooled significantly, to the 40s and 50s overnight and upper 60s and low 70s Sunday. But the break apparently will be relatively brief, with high pressure and some warming expected by midweek.

The winds accompanying Saturday’s cold front, from the west and gusting to 30 mph, didn’t cause quite as much trouble as crews feared, as all lines held, except the one on the eastern flank of the fire.

Spot fires stopped near fish hatchery, campground

There, the winds pushed the flames past containment lines along Forest Road 12, near Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery and west of Camp Sherman. Firefighters used bulldozers to build a new containment line, and no structures were lost. The fight took more than 12 hours to win, until about 4:30 a.m., said Jay Esperance, operations section chief.

The winds Saturday also blew embers across the Metolius River and Forest Road 14, starting a quarter-acre spot fire near the Lower Bridge Campground. Crews quickly doused the blaze, and Saturday night’s infrared flight detected no heat from that or other areas east of the river.

Another tall smoke column rose over the fire Saturday, visible as far away as Eugene, but primarily was from either interior burning or crews’ burnout operations, to rob the fire of fuel. About 6,000 acres burned Saturday, primarily interior burning in the Cabot Creek area.

Crews and some of the 14 helicopters working the blaze held fire line along Three Finger Jack and looked for more ways to contain the fire above state Highway 22. Smoky conditions kept helicopters from being able to work on much of the east flank Saturday. The smoke cleared Sunday, allowing the choppers to work on the east side, along the Metolius River.

The fire (http://www.bandbcomplex.com) is so big that a second, Type II incident management team was called in to direct suppression efforts on the west side of the blaze, working from a new base camp at Idanha, east of Detroit Lake on Highway 22.

The Eastern Great Basin Type 1 Incident Management Team, led by Kim Martin, arrived late Saturday afternoon to take over for Pacific Northwest Team 3, and Commander Bob Anderson. Team 3 has been managing the fire for more than two weeks and was heading home for a rest break. Martin’s team assumed command of the fire battle Sunday morning.

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