Increased risk of wildfires this weekend as Oregon fire season ‘gets off to an aggressive start’

Heat, lightning and wind have put southern, central and eastern Oregon at high risk for wildfires much earlier in the summer than state officials expected.

“We’re fighting the fire like it’s August 19th, not July 19th,” Mariana Ruiz-Temple, Oregon’s state fire chief, said at a news conference Friday. The Northwest’s wildfire season can last from May to October, but it’s typically at its worst from July to September.

According to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, a wildfire prevention and response network involving nine state and federal agencies in the western U.S., 24 large fires of 250 acres or more were burning across parts of Oregon as of Friday afternoon.

In the past week alone, Governor Tina Kotek has declared five major fires, meaning that many buildings have burned down or the fires are too large for local resources to handle. They are the result of human-caused fires and thousands of lightning strikes earlier in the week that started more than 100 new fires.

Ruiz-Temple and Oregon Department of Forestry deputy director of fire operations Kyle Williams said thunderstorms expected Friday through Monday will further increase the risk. South-central Oregon, in the Klamath and Medford areas, are at the greatest risk Friday night, before lightning is expected to move north and east through Monday.

The two reiterated their pleas to Oregonians to minimize the risk of human-caused wildfires so their agencies can better manage scarce resources.

“We’re busy enough and there’s more lightning coming, and we can handle that as long as our resources aren’t too busy fighting other man-made fires,” Williams said.

So far, the number of human-caused wildfires in Oregon has been below average, Williams said. But because conditions are so hot and dry, those fires are getting bigger and burning more acres than average.

Fire regulations in state and national parks and forests have gone into effect, and fires are only allowed in designated camping areas. Officials recommend that fires be properly extinguished and put out, that people keep their vehicles off dry grass, and that their vehicle chains are not dragging. The Oregon Department of Forestry recommends not burning yard waste during fire season.

Statewide emergency

On July 12, Kotek declared a state of emergency for wildfires across the state, allowing the National Guard to be deployed to parts of the state and allowing state and federal resources to flow to areas in need.

“To be completely honest, our fire season has started off very aggressively,” she said.

Oregon has received additional equipment and firefighters from Washington, California, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, Colorado and Florida, and Kotek expects more wildland firefighters to arrive in the coming days.

“I cannot stress enough: This is a dynamic, rapidly changing situation for our state, and we will continue to use every resource and every person we can get to fight these fires,” she said.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information about how to prepare for possible evacuation, visit: wildfire.oregon.gov

Kotek could not provide details on whether the state will exceed its emergency firefighting budget, but did indicate that costs are rising.

“I would say it will be more expensive than last fire season. I think that’s a safe bet,” she said.

Global problems with CrowdStrike security software that shut down Microsoft systems have not affected the agency’s work or its efforts to fight wildfires in Oregon, Kotek said.

Teams from the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office, Department of Forestry, and the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are working together to protect property and natural resources. Erin McMahon, director of the Department of Emergency Management, said there have been 88 evacuation orders issued in the state so far this summer.

“Our firefighters are working around the clock, under conditions that are hard for many of us to comprehend,” Kotek said. “It’s going to be a long fire season, and we’re going to need every single one of them.”

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Oregon Capital Chronicle

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