Fire season around Sweet Home continues to be fairly quiet, but fire danger is high.
“We’re in high dispatch, and we’re in high fire danger,” said Oregon Department of Forestry Sweet Home Unit Protection Supervisor Jim Basting. High dispatch refers to the amount of personnel and equipment that are dispatched.
Fuels are dry, Basting said, and even though it has been an “oddball” summer, fire can flare up easily.
Monday afternoon, at about 1 p.m., ODF and Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District responded to a grass fire at 27521 Fern Ridge Road, owned by Daryl Saxton.
The cause was undetermined, Protection Supervisor Chad Calderwood said. It burned about a half acre, the largest fire on Sweet Home Unit so far this season.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District handled the initial attack on the fire while Kenny May, working for Wes Staley, assisted. He had been passing by in a water tender and stopped to help.
Sunday, the Sweet Home Unit responded to one call, Basting said. A fire got away from a burn barrel near the district. The burn barrel wasn’t deliberately active. The owner had tossed a cigarette butt into the barrel, starting the fire.
A week and a half ago, the Sweet Home Unit responded to two fires, a quarter-acre fire off Highway 228, Basting said. That fire started when a lawnmower and hit a rock.
Firefighters also responded to a fire near milepost 34 on Highway 20 that was probably human caused, Basting said. The fire burned about a 10th of an acre.
Sweet Home Unit has had 55 runs since the first of July, Basting said. The majority of those have been non-action fires, including burn barrels or campfires that didn’t get away but the public reported.
Just a small number, probably less than a dozen, of the total were actual fires.