Sean C. Morgan
Fire damage has been minimal this year, and wet weather is putting a damper on the danger levels.
The Industrial Precaution Level is down to one, and fire danger is rated moderate in the wake of last week’s storm. Oregon Department of Forestry protected lands remain in regulated use.
“And we really haven’t had squat,” said ODF Sweet Home Unit Forester Craig Pettinger of the fire damage. There were a few “small, small, small” fires held over from last week’s lightning storm.
“But we got so much rain,” Pettinger said, it wasn’t a problem. Last week’s storm dumped 2.96 inches of rain, measured at the Sweet Home Unit office, in a 24-hour period.
“Beyond that, we had a few folks we had to talk to about burning,” Pettinger said. Otherwise, the wildland firefighters haven’t really had to deal with much.
For the calendar year, fire has burned .31 acres of Sweet Home Unit lands, Pettinger said. Of those, .21 acres were caused by lightning fire, and .1 acres were caused by humans. The majority of that was a fire along Cascadia Drive earlier this summer.
Last year, by Sept. 12, 3.17 acres had been burned, all of it caused by humans. The 10-year average is 125.93 acres.
“That’s a good number,” Pettinger said. So far this fiscal year, since July 1, the Sweet Home Unit has responded to 54 calls, up from 40 in the same period last year.
“We’ve still got some fire season and east winds to go,” Pettinger said.
But Sweet Home was expected to receive more rain during the first part of this week, Pettinger said Thursday. He didn’t expect it to be a season-ending event.
The season typically ends in mid-October, Pettinger said, but it depends on rainfall and east winds, which “can dry stuff out again in a hurry.”
Major fires continue burning in southern Oregon, particularly the Douglas Complex and the Big Windy Fire in the Rogue River canyon.
The Sweet Home Unit still has an engine on the Douglas Complex, Pettinger said. The unit has been rotating three different crews on it for past month and a half.
No personnel are out of state, he said. The last out-of-state trip was to Alaska early this summer.