Scott Swanson
Linn County Commissioner Will Tucker has a beef with U.S. Forest Service leaders, so he took it last week to Sweet Home District Ranger Nikki Swanson.
But not in the way that sounds.
Tucker organized a Jan. 4 meeting with Swanson, newly retired Sheriff Jim Yon and Sweet Home City Councilwoman Angelita Sanchez at the Sweet Home Ranger Station.
The purpose? To honor Swanson for what, Tucker says, was “heroism” as she dealt with forest fires on Labor Day weekend of 2020.
Two fires had been burning since August of that year northeast of Sweet Home: the Beachie Creek Fire in the Opal Creek area north of Detroit Lake and the Lionshead Fire east of Mt. Jefferson. Swanson had been working on the latter and was getting nervous.
“It was a crazy period of time,” she said, recounting the experience.
The Lionshead Fire was on the east side of Mt. Jefferson and “all of the models” were projecting 50 mph winds “for days and days and days,” while little had been done to slow the fire’s progress. “Even though the models try to forecast the worst-case scenario, they never showed the fire coming across the pass,” she said.
“But,” Swanson continued, “I’m a scientist. I know that models can be wrong. I know that models are only as good as the data that the model has seen. And so what if the model was wrong?”
She noted that she’d worked on the Whitewater Fire in 2017, which burned 11,500 acres in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness, torching some of the state’s most popular hiking areas.
“On the Whitewater Fire we waited too long to evacuate, and so people were evacuating with flames at their backs. We didn’t want that.”
As the Lionshead Fire burned east of the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness, which was full of Labor Day visitors, Swanson had a sense of deja vu. But it wasn’t shared by her Forest Service colleagues, who had other concerns.
“The fire management team wasn’t even focused on our side yet,” she said. “We weren’t even part of the delegation. We weren’t part of anything. It wasn’t even our fire yet.”
Swanson said she kept raising her concerns in meetings.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, I want to do this,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, I think it’s premature.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, while I respect that you think it’s premature, but given what happened with Whitewater, I want to order an orderly exit.’
“If I’m wrong, people’s Labor Day weekend got messed up a bit. But people are alive, right? And so that’s kind of what kept going through my head: If I’m wrong, people will be alive to complain. And I can handle that. If I don’t do anything, when I have this strong feeling about acting, and I’m wrong about that, people will die and I can’t live with that.”
Swanson followed through, issuing a “reverse 9-1-1” that triggered what Tucker called “an amazing effort” on Saturday and Sunday prior to Labor Day to alert visitors in the approximately 6-by-20-mile wilderness area that they needed to evacuate.
Linn County Sheriff’s deputies, Search and Rescue and Posse members, and Forest Service staffers went into action, contacting visitors on Saturday and Sunday and telling them to get out. Trails and campgrounds in and beyond the Metolius Basin – including a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, were closed.
“There were over 100 cars (at trailheads) tagged with notices that they needed leave,” Tucker said.
One U.S. Forest Service staffer from the Eugene area, who is a trail runner, volunteered.
“He’s like, ‘I can run 20 miles in a day. Let me take this segment,'” Swanson said.
Tucker said Sheriff’s deputies connected with two dozen camping parties, “50 or 60 people.”
“She dramatically changed what was happening by the timing, by them having a chance to respond.”
By Monday, Swanson’s gut feeling proved correct, he said.
During the afternoon winds from the east began picking up, and by nightfall were raging at 50 to 75 mph down the Santiam Canyon, and driving the Lionshead into the wilderness and over the pass, where it continued westward to join the Beachie Fire, which had been burning the same way northeast of Detroit. Downed power lines created 13 spot fires along Highway 22, adding to the conflagration that overwhelmed the canyon and its communities.
The merged fires, which became known as the Santiam Fire, burned a total of 313,110 acres – one of the largest in state history, destroying some 1,568 buildings and killing five people.
“Her call actually saved lives,” Tucker said. “There were lots of heroes that weekend. Well, she was a hero a couple of days before.”
He said Sheriff’s Lt. Joe Larsen, who heads the Search and Rescue team, was in the wilderness area Tuesday.
“He would have been recovering bodies if they hadn’t been up there on Saturday and Sunday.
“We heard that 20 or 30 people were contacted that were not aware of that fire. And so those lives (Swanson) saved. To be in this world, we’re lucky to save one.
“And the other message I want to get across to the world with the Nikki Swanson story is that we have processes in place and those processes all work until they don’t.”
Tucker presented Swanson with a laser-etched maple wood medallion bearing the Linn County seal that, he noted, he paid for himself, and Yon gave her a Sheriff’s Office “Challenge Coin” award.
“The fact is, there are people like Nikki who I just want them to go through life knowing they are special to us,” Tucker said.
Swanson said her favorite memory from the incident was hearing from a father and his son who were doing “this sort of rite-of-passage, first-long-trek-with-your-son kind of backpacking trip,” who got to a road and were able to hitch-hike to safety.
“The way he tells the story is that they were so far in there, they wouldn’t have had a chance.
“I went to a fire meeting at 6 p.m. and at 8 p.m. I’m getting a phone call saying ‘it’s six miles on your side.’ It spotted six miles in a matter of two hours. There would have been no getting anyone out then.”
Tucker said U.S. Forest Service authorities have been “reluctant” to recognize the importance of Swanson’s decision.
“There were lots of heroes. I get that. But this woman had a gut feeling and she went and she did it.”