Sean C. Morgan
Local firefighters stop-ped a 6.3-acre wildland fire Thursday near the intersection of Soda Fork Road and Highway 20.
The fire almost reached the edge of the Menagerie Wilderness but was primarily contained on private property.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District was first to respond to the fire. Personnel had already been en route to a reported crash on Highway 20 east of Cascadia when that call was canceled and they received a report at approximately 3:24 p.m. of a structure fire further east, near mile marker 53.
The property, owned by Betsy Gardner Sharp, is located immediately to the west of Soda Fork Road, north of the highway.
They continued on with structure fire gear and attacked the fire. ODF personnel, who protect forest land in the area, were just leaving the Sweet Home High School fire school site on Scott Mountain (see related story) when they received the call.
The property includes a shop that had been minimally damaged. The fire spread quickly uphill toward a standing timber unit, claiming 6.3 acres based on measurements by the Oregon Department of Forestry on Friday.
An investigation revealed the cause of the fire was an electrical arc from wiring to a well house, said Fire Chief Dave Barringer.
Responding to the fire were Sweet Home fire department, ODF, the U.S. Forest Service and Cascade Timber Consulting, with more than 10 pieces of apparatus and 25 firefighters.
It’s the biggest timber fire in the ODF Sweet Home Unit since the 11-acre Pleasant Valley fire in 2007, said Chad Calderwood, forest protection supervisor.
The biggest challenge was “the lack of people,” Calderwood said. The Sweet Home Unit won’t have its full fire crew on till June.
“We didn’t have our crew on, and we don’t have aviation,” Calder-wood said. “It forced us to call outside resources from the Santiam Unit up in Lyons and resources from Springfield.”
The assistance from Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District was critical, he said. “It could have gotten a lot bigger. It got within 75 feet of Menagerie Wilderness.”
“It was a great job by them (SHFAD),” Calderwood said. “They were there first.”
Responders were called to a structure fire, he said, and they were prepared for a structure fire.
“They still went in and attacked it,” Calderwood said. “They got there in their turnouts. They got there, they still went in there and they were able to hold their side until we got resources there and were able to relieve them.”
When Sweet Home firefighters arrived, they found moss and twigs on fire on the roof of the shop on the west side of Soda Fork Road, Barringer said. They quickly put out that fire with a brush rig.
“We started running a hose lay up the west flank,” Barringer said. “I’m really impressed with our crews, their ability to be out there in structure fire gear.”
A CTC employee was actually first on the scene, Barringer said. He attempted to use a garden hose connected to the well house, but without power, the hose had no pressure.
The fire was reported quickly, and the fire department responded quickly, he said. Those were keys to keeping the fire from spreading further.
On Friday, the Sweet Home Unit brought in two state inmate crews to mop up and build control lines, Calderwood said. Six smokes were still visible on the property on Friday. He expected it to be 100 percent contained by Friday evening.
The Sweet Home Unit also hired two forest officers to go to work early, to support the mop-up and keep an eye on it over the weekend.
“It didn’t burn real deep,” Calderwood said, and he expects rain and cooler weather this week to keep any sleepers from coming back up.
The recent hot, dry weather shows that wildfire knows no season, Calderwood said. The fire was on a south slope, which receives the most sun and dries out faster than those facing other directions.
It doesn’t take much warm weather to dry out the smaller fuels and increase the risk of fire, he said. “Conditions can change just like that in three days.”
While the cause is known, the circumstances of the fire remain under investigation by the ODF, Calderwood said.
Last week, the ODF was warning people to exercise care when burning debris, including posting a sign outside its Sweet Home office stating that “Wildfire Knows No Season.”
“Conditions are changing,” Calderwood said. “People need to be vigilant.”
People need to be cognizant of the weather, he said. “This reminds us again to be aware of the conditions.”
When burning, people need to keep a water source nearby along with a tool, like a shovel, Calderwood said. They also need to attend the fire.
Before burning, Calderwood urges people to call the burn line at (541) 451-1904 to make sure it is a burn day.
Fire season typically starts at the end of June or early July.
It started early last year following an exceptionally dry spring that prevented the annual fire school held in Sweet Home from offering live fire training.
While the weather has been wet so far this year, Calderwood said, ODF forecasters anticipate a dry April and May again this year, although it may not be quite as dry as last year.
Some areas of Oregon have yet to recover from last year’s drought, he said.