Thanks to local firefighters
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Editor:
I want to thank all of the firefighters in our community for their work, whether for the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, Oregon Department of Forestry or local logging companies.
SHFAD responded to 52 calls the night of the windstorm, Sept. 7-8. To put that into perspective, firefighters normally respond to somewhere between 300 and 400 per year. The windstorm’s call load was something like an eighth of a busy year, all in one night.
Firefighters stopped at a couple of fires that could have made our story the same as the North Santiam Canyon’s and the McKenzie Valley’s. One firefighter told me we were lucky.
We were. They were on it. They did their jobs. They got it done; and as the subsequent week wore on, we had time, something our neighbors to the north and south did not, allowing us the luxury of rising anxiety as we watched the McKenzie fire spill onto the Upper Calapooia, raising evacuation warnings in the area and prompting the actual evacuation of the Upper Calapooia, Holley and Brush Creek areas.
And then those tired firefighters kept looking out for us throughout the week, holding back the danger in Linn County. I know you firefighters have heard this a lot this week, but I want to repeat it in print, for the record: Thank you.
Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home
