Firefighters from the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District and Oregon Department of Forestry responded Thursday afternoon, April 24, to a piece of burning logging equipment on Wiley Creek Drive.
Firefighters were dispatched shortly after 2 p.m. to the blaze, located south of Cedar Creek Road on a private homestead located about half a mile past the blacktop on Wiley Creek. The harvester was being used to cut timber on the property, which according to county records, is owned by Alvin and Marsha Seiber.
Fire Chief Nick Tyler credited the operator of the machine, whose name was not available, and the landowner for doing “a good job of trying to contain the fire with extinguishers.”
He said the cause of the fire was unknown, due to the fact that any clues to how it ignited are generally burned up due to the head of the blaze.
The fire did spread to nearby vegetation, burning about one-tenth of an acre before ODF and Sweet Home crews were able to establish a fire line. According to SHFAD, the fire was mostly contained to the equipment, which was destroyed.
Tyler said firefighters were aided by the fact that humidity was higher Thursday than it was a day earlier when a burn pile spread to nearby brush and took off up a hillside in the 42000 block of Ames Creek Road.
Two brush rigs and nine firefighters responded about 4 p.m. to that fire and were able to extinguish it before it spread further.
“From my perspective, the fact that the owner and the contractor were both there helped,” Tyler said of the Wiley Creek blaze. “The 9% difference in relative humidity from the Ames Creek fire didn’t allow the brush to burn.”