Sean C. Morgan
It’s not supposed to be fire season, but northwestern Oregon, the coast range and the southwest interior experienced several wildfires last week.
As during last summer’s fire season, the Sweet Home area was spared, though a backyard burn on Marks Ridge near Jones Road did prompt a visit by firefighters Saturday evening.
Oregon Department of Forestry Sweet Home Unit Forester Craig Pettinger said that east winds and low precipitation dried out Western Oregon, creating conditions to allow fires to take off.
Most originated as controlled burns that were set many weeks ago during the typical fall season for burning logging slash.
Although such fires are monitored routinely, some rekindled Wednesday and Thursday, the result of an extraordinary January combination of strong east winds and low relative humidity, along with the generally dry fuel conditions this winter.
Rainfall measured at the Sweet Home Unit for 2013 was 39.69 inches, the lowest recorded there since 1982, Pettinger said. Average rainfall is more than 47 inches.
This resulted in three fire complexes – east of Scotts Mills in the North Santiam Canyon near Gates and on the south coast east of Bandon. These range in size from roughly 100 to 300 acres. There are several additional fires, ranging in size from roughly 30 to 100 acres, in dispersed locations including the Astoria and Shady Cove areas and on the south coast.
“We have checked back with our landowners,” Pettinger said. They’re keeping an eye on their slash piles.
“Two foresters are out checking stuff right now,” he said Friday.
Landowner resources, contract crews and helicopters and inmate crews from the Department of Corrections have all participated in the firefighting operations.
Both of Sweet Home’s forest protection supervisors were assigned to fires in other areas last week, Pettinger said. Other than them, “we don’t really have anybody to give.”
As of Friday, some of the fires were fully contained, and fire managers report good progress on the others.
Winds were expected to subside Friday evening and humidity to rise, decreasing the fire danger through the weekend.
The weather conditions and fires are unusual for this time of year.
“Normally, this time of year, you can’t get up to where these fires are,” Pettinger said. They’re under snow. One local forester was able to make it up to Green Peter Lookout and bring back a shingle that had been blown off by high winds. Usually, this time of year, crews cannot even get to the lookout.
It may be calm in town, he said, but up another 1,000 feet, the wind will “knock you over.”
“The good news for us and everybody else, tomorrow morning, it shouldn’t be blowing as hard,” Pettinger said.