Firefighters work on extinguishing smoldering areas on Protection Island following the initial blaze.

Photo courtesy Olympic National Forest

Pilot Summer Martell was at her home near the Chevy Chase Golf Course on Tuesday, Aug. 3 when she first smelled fire. 

“I looked over the ridge from the northwest of my house and could see smoke,” Martell said.

Protection Island was ablaze.

When she reported the fire around noon, multiple agencies were already fighting the fire. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” she recalled when she first heard that the smoke was coming from Protection Island. 

It’s “the least populated place,” Martell added.

“The first thing I did after calling 911 was to call my friend, Marty,” she said. 

Marty Bluewater, the only resident of Protection Island, was already on his boat on his way to Seattle. 

But the smoke had the potential to halt Martell’s plans for the day; she was scheduled to give an early afternoon pilot exam to a flier from Everett. The lifelong Port Townsend resident has been a self-described “mascot of the Port Townsend sky” for decades, and has enjoyed the airspace of the Olympic Peninsula for years. 

She told her student to hold tight while she rounded up some smoke-free pasture for her two horses out on Beaver Valley Road. As the smoke over the Port Townsend Airport’s runway cleared, she told her pilot-to-be that they were still on for the exam.

And up they went.

As soon as the exam was over, Martell asked if she could take over the controls. She beelined to Protection Island. 

“I had an idea of where the nesting sites were,” she said, having visited the island as Bluewater’s guest. 

She took photos from the aircraft, and sent them to Bluewater right away so he could see the status of his home.

Martell returned in her own plane, a Cessna 172 single-engine four-seater, after the smoke had cleared Monday, Aug. 9. 

“You could see the origins on the beach,” she said, musing on how the fire could have started.

Becky Bennett, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife community outreach liaison, said the statewide investigative unit is still working on the “high-profile” case as of Tuesday, Aug.17. 

The Protection Island fire burned approximately 25 acres on the southwest edge of the island, a 379-acre national wildlife refuge. 

According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 70 percent of nesting seabirds in the Puget Sound area and Straits of San Juan de Fuca depend on the island’s unique habitat, including 50 percent of the last remaining tufted puffins in Puget Sound. 

Anyone with information surrounding this incident is encouraged to contact Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Enforcement at 877-933-9847, via website, or through text message. Photos can be sent to the department at TIP411 (847411).