Benny Westcott
267 firefighters fought the Wiley Fire, but despite all this manpower they came up against a problem. How were they going to get fire fighting apparatus across Little Wiley Creek to continue battling the flames? There was a bridge across the water, but it wasn’t suitable for such an operation.
So Fire Incident Commander Chad Calderwood posed a question to Cascade Timber Consulting staffers, whose land the bridge, built years ago by another timber company, was on: “What’s the chances of getting this bridge fixed?”
Turns out, pretty good.
CTC Forest Engineer Kevin Van Cleave made a call to CTC President Milt Moran to see if they could make it work. And then just 30 hours after that call was made, a new bridge sat where the faulty one had been, allowing fire engines and bulldozers to cross it.
That’s a sped up timetable, to say the least. “That’s unheard of,” Moran said. “That just doesn’t happen.”
Right away after getting the call from Van Cleave, Moran determined that he would rather have the structure replaced than repaired, citing the reasoning “If you bandaid something up, you’ve got to fix it eventually. We wanted to do it right the first time.”
So Van Cleave got hold of Stayton-based Farline Bridge, Inc. They happened to have a bridge that was the right length sitting in their yard.
“It was really fortunate that we didn’t have to pour a bridge,” Moran said. “It was already poured and cured and just kind of sitting on a shelf at this bridge outfit yard.”
The old bridge had already been on Corvallis-based McGee Engineering’s radar as “needing something,” Van Cleave said. “They kind of already knew the specs and dimensions, and the abutments and approaches were in good shape. So it was kind of a turnkey operation for us.”
The old bridge was lifted out and precast concrete blocks were put in for the new bridge to sit on. That new bridge would have a steel substructure with composite concrete deck panels laid over top of it.
Moran said workers labored “around the clock” to get the bridge put in, work that included clearing the area of overhanging trees. An engineer from McGee was on scene pretty much the whole time during the process.
Calderwood also was impressed with the accelerated time frame. “I think CTC’s got the record for the fastest bridge built in Linn County… in the state,” he said. “They had that bridge torn out and a new one installed the next day.”
The quick bridge construction wasn’t in CTC’s long term plan, obviously, but they made do. “We didn’t budget for this bridge,” Moran said. “It was outside of our budget, but it was an emergency expenditure. Whenever we have a wildfire, we want to bring out the big guns to take care of it.”
With the bridge in good working condition, firefighters were able to access the northwestern edge of the fire.
“We couldn’t have gotten the equipment over there that we did get without the bridge, fire trucks and tenders especially,” Moran said. He added “You can’t just throw a culvert in. It has to be a bridge structure over the water.”
The bridge was also essential to getting an ambulance near where the firefighters were working. Moran said that CTC almost always has an ambulance on standby when fires are being fought, especially in really rough country. “Firefighter safety is always top of our minds whenever we’re dealing with fire,” he said.
The northwestern edge of the fire was about two and a half miles from where the bridge was put in. Without the bridge, Moran said “We still would have been able to fight the fire, but it would have been a logistical nightmare. We would have had to hand pack pumps in there and put them in, and would have had a lot longer hose lays into the fire.”
The Wiley Fire, located nine miles southeast of Sweet Home and first reported on Aug. 7 near Buck Mountain, ultimately burned about five acres of CTC property. The blaze burned 245 acres in all; all but 23 of those acres were U.S. Forest Service land. 18 of the acres were owned by Giustina Resources, a forestry service based in Springfield. The Wiley Fire was 100% contained by Sept. 6.
Moran said the newly constructed bridge will be used by CTC in the future for moving timber and for access to an adjacent piece of property.