Crews have taken advantage of cooperative weather this week to battle the Bruler Fire, now estimated at 155 acres.
According to Northwest Incident Management Team incident commander Brian Gales, firefighters have been able to expand previously established dozer lines on the fire’s east side. Additional resources arrived scene Wednesday and successfully kept it within an established perimeter.
“We’re working to increase the probability that the Bruler Fire stays within its current footprint during this critical timeframe,” he said.
About 168 personnel are working at the scene, including fallers, hand crews, dozers, engines and a Type 2 helicopter.
What became the Bruler Fire was first spotted early Monday afternoon 20 miles east of Sweet Home, near the boundary between the Detroit and Sweet Home ranger districts in east Linn County. It burns near the jurisdiction of Forest Roads 11 (Straight Creek and Quartzville roads) and 1133 approximately 8 miles south of Detroit Lake.
A large closure area has been established to maintain safety. This includes large portions of U.S. Forest Service lands south of Detroit Lake, west of Highway 22 and north of Highway 20, plus the Middle Santiam Wilderness, Daly Lake, Tule Lake and the Old Cascade Crest trail system. A Bureau of Land Management closure area is also in place for areas along the Quartzville Scenic Byway and Quartzville Road, including Yellowbottom Campground, Old Miner’s Meadow Group Site and nearby dispersed camping areas.
Air quality around Detroit and Sweet Home continues to be listed as “good,” the U.S. Forest Service reported, and light winds from the southeast are keeping smoke from this and surrounding fires to the east.
Tensions, however, from this recent conflagration remain high, as the 400,000-plus-acre Santiam Fire, one of the state’s most historic infernos, devastated the small city of Detroit last September. Some 264 homes were destroyed.
The fire’s cause remains under investigation.
Visit InciWeb for more information about closures at inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7663/. For other updates, please consult the Willamette National Forest’s Bruler Fire Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/brulerfire2021) or the agency’s Twitter account at @WillametteNF.