Tempering the flames
Aug. 21—In the span of one night this week, 232 lightning strikes sparked dozens of wildfires in Jackson and Josephine counties. Getting a handle on them required preparation, perspiration and all hands on deck.
To face off against a wave of fire starts sparked by a lightning storm over Southern Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry Southwest District broke the two counties into quadrants. Supervisors in each section strategized ways to utilize an extra 200 contracted personnel and six extra helicopters Thursday, while a fifth supervisor coordinated initial attack teams to tackle the newest fire starts.
By the end of the week, a third of roughly four dozen new fires were extinguished, and containment lines were wrapped around nearly all of the largest of the new fires — the Hog Creek Fire near Merlin and the Rum Creek Fire north of Galice. The Hog Creek held at 30 acres as of Saturday, and only the Rum Creek fire was not lined as of late Saturday estimated at 100 acres, according to ODF spokeswoman Natalie Weber. (Corrected)
It continued a pattern so far this fire season in Southern Oregon of firefighters being successful at keeping fires small.
But the success sometimes comes at a high cost.
A firefighter working the Rum Creek Fire, 25-year-old Logan Taylor of Talent, was killed Thursday by a falling tree. Another firefighter working a fire on Tallowbox Mountain south of Applegate needed to be pulled from the fire lines after suffering a heat-related illness.
Firefighter Collin Hagan, 27, of Michigan, was killed Aug. 10 by a falling tree on the Big Swamp Fire north of Crater Lake.
A week earlier, Aug. 3, a firefighter working the lightning-caused Wards Creek Fire east of Rogue River needed to be flown from the fire lines to the bottom of the road then taken to a nearby hospital after working in temperatures in the high 90s.
Lightning naturally tends to strike the tallest point, according to ODF Southwest Oregon District spokeswoman Natalie Weber, so lightning-caused wildfires often are in steep terrain where crews also face challenges such as falling rocks and trees.
"In a lot of cases, there isn't very good access, so firefighters are driving to the closest point and then having to hike farther up the hill to actually get to the fire in order to start working on it," Weber said.
Since the fire season began June 1, crews have faced triple-digit temperatures and hundreds of lightning strikes, not to mention multiple close calls. Yet as of this week, no local fire has surpassed the low double digits in acreage.
With fire season almost three months old, local fire officials shared insights on their efforts and the tools used to keep fires small.
Story of another summer
On July 15, 2018, a lightning storm sparked at least 145 fires across Southern Oregon. Many of those fires were quickly extinguished, but not all.
Within a week, the Rogue Valley's air quality forced Oregon Shakespeare Festival to cancel outdoor performances and Britt to move its outdoor classical concerts to North Medford High School's auditorium.
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Fire & Aviation Staff Officer Dan Quinones was the forest's acting forest duty officer the day the 2018 fires broke.
Quinones also helped allocate resources this fire season, which has a different track record: 44 fires that burned a combined 8.07 acres. He described this season's strategy in a Zoom interview earlier this month.
"The strategy in '18 and the strategy today are really the same," Quinones said. "In 2018, we ran out of stuff — not just locally but nationally."
The July 2018 fires were competing with other pressing wildfires, according to Quinones, and the Geographic Area Coordination Center in Portland had to prioritize resources for fires threatening people, property and infrastructure.
Fires in backcountry and wilderness areas lost out. Quinones said the resources they had were focused on protecting communities in Ashland, Butte Falls, Jacksonville and Cave Junction.
"We just didn't have enough stuff to get to those fires in a timely fashion, even though we had jumpers on them, etc.," Quinones said.
In the biggest firefights, such as those threatening entire communities, watersheds or critical infrastructure, the GACC has the ability to reassign resources. It's a sword that cuts both ways.
"We might lose some aircraft or ground resources without being asked — they'll just take them," Quinones said.
Quinones described a good relationship and rapport with the GACC Portland office as key to ensuring they understand the resources RRSNF needs to keep during fire season. Presently, he said, "there are no issues."
"They know our fuel type down here and that our fires, once they get established, are very resistant to control," Quinones said.
Bracing for lightning
When lightning is in the forecast — especially on dry fuels — Quinones will coordinate the strategic placement of hand crews, tree fallers, fire engines, water tenders, dozers and other equipment needed on the ground between stations in Prospect, Jacksonville, Powers, Cave Junction and Gold Beach, along with the J. Herbert Stone Nursery in Central Point.
"We got some places to put stuff," Quinones said.
A forest duty officer at each of the districts oversees operations on the entire forest and will seek out input from staff officers such as Quinones.
"From the bigger picture, I'll say, 'Hey, can we move this one asset from one location to another location? Because this is what we have going on,'" Quinones said.
Quinones said he coordinates closely with partner agencies such as Oregon Department of Forestry in stationing and allocating resources.
"We get all the tools in our toolbox that we need — not only for us but also for where we think we may need to support our partners as well," Quinones said. "We stage them around the forest for quick response for the projected areas for the event."
New tools for looking ahead
Late last month, the Corey Fire broke out on the outskirts of Central Point and White City and started spreading to nearby properties, prompting the evacuation of approximately 25 residents nearby.
The fire started on a property containing large amounts of debris and abandoned vehicles, and it took out three mobile homes on the property, but the fire never grew beyond 5 acres, and 15 threatened structures were spared.
According to Fire District 3 Chief Robert Horton, the Corey Fire was one of six fires in his jurisdiction aided by two new camera-based technologies this fire season giving incident commanders the ability to see what they're up against.
Horton chairs the Governor's Fire Service Policy Council, which provides guidance to the governor and the Oregon State Fire Marshal's Office, and was recently named Vice President of the Western Fire Chiefs Association.
In prior years, incident commanders had to wait until the first firefighters arrived on scene and saw the fire with their own eyes before calling for the resources they need.
"We have the technology today that allows for that visualization to occur at time of event, not time of first unit arrival," Horton said.
The Alert Wildfire Camera system utilizes cameras watching over roughly a dozen areas across the Rogue Valley, according to Horton.
The cameras are designed to complement those used in ODF's Detection Center, which looks out at rural areas in Jackson and Josephine counties.
"They're looking for lightning strikes in the forest so they can get their resources out there fast," Horton said. "Our cameras are more targeted toward the interface — where the forest is meeting the communities."
The camera Fire District 3 utilizes is on Long Mountain and covers parts of Eagle Point, White City and Sams Valley. Other cameras in the system include one on Mount Baldy that helps Fire District 5, providing a view of Phoenix, Talent and parts of Ashland. A third camera covers the Illinois Valley.
The public can view feeds from the cameras by visiting alertwildfire.org, but emergency response personnel have the power to pan, tilt and zoom if they need to zero in on an area, according to Horton.
Fire District 3 collaborated with Rogue Valley Council of Governments and Rogue Broadband to install the Long Mountain camera on the company's tower, according to Horton.
"We really worked hard in that collaboration to have that camera and the Mount Baldy camera both operational by this fire season," Horton said.
Another technology rolled out in late June and early July is the new 911 Eye system, which allows a person calling in an emergency to send livestream video to the 911 dispatcher.
The 911 dispatcher can send the caller a link which can be shared with Fire District 3's incident command. If bandwidth is limited, the system can accommodate photos instead.
Since the Labor Day 2020 wildfires, Horton said there are more firefighting resources at the local level than there were.
Funds made available from the Oregon Legislature last year through Senate Bill 762 provided fire agencies added funding that Fire District 3 utilized to add a wildland response unit on shift every day.
"Right on initial response we have more units to send out to calls," Horton said.
Other districts throughout the Rogue Valley used the fire funding to increase their staff, and SB 762 also covered added resources such as engines and air resources for ODF.
"We've got more firefighting resources in our system — across the state but especially here — since the 2020 season," Horton said.
Although there's more resources, Horton remembers the challenge he faced during the Labor Day 2020 fires, when the massively destructive Almeda Fire and South Obenchain Fire broke out. With all local resources battling the fires, he called Salem for help, but all of the state's resources were allocated to seven conflagrations across Oregon.
"On that day there wasn't units," Horton said. "There's more capacity in the state of Oregon now, so we hope to not have that vulnerability, but I would be remiss if I didn't say there's more room for us to go.
"We still could use more units across the state," Horton added.
Reach web editor Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or nmorgan@rosebudmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MTwebeditor.
Correction Aug. 21: This story was updated with correct information about the Rum Creek Fire. The version of this story that ran in print wrongly stated that Oregon Department of Forestry crews had contained the Rum Creek Fire. The earlier story left out new information from ODF issued Saturday that the fire had not yet been lined.
More details about the Rum Creek fire are available in this link.
