Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
More than a half-inch of rain and some unseasonably cool weather have reduced the fire danger around Sweet Home, at least for a few days, fire officials say.
“Probably for the light fuels, it’s doing a number on them till the sun comes out,” Oregon Department of Forestry Sweet Home Unit Home Forest Protection Supervisor Jim Basting said of the moisture. “It probably soaked through the canopy some. Usually, summer rains don’t penetrate the forest canopy much.”
But three days of 80-degree weather will have the fine fuels dried out again, Basting said. The weather was supposed to stay cool through the weekend and then get back into the 80-degree range, not quite as hot as it has been.
The Sweet Home Unit was up to Industrial Precaution Level II until the rain started last week and it dropped back to Level I.
Regulated use for the public continued unabated though, Basting said. “Just because it rained, you still can’t have a campfire.”
Right now, “the place it would probably still burn is a clearcut,” he said.
Thus far, the fire season has been relatively slow this summer, he said. The Sweet Home Unit had a small fire caused by a power line about two weeks ago and firefighters have responded to about 10 burning vehicles and false alarms along with three or four small fires this summer.
So far this year, Sweet Home has had no lightning fires, Basting said.
The lighting storms around Sportsman’s Holiday weekend “just didn’t bother us,” he said. “There was great concern because that’s when Medford, Grants Pass and Klamath Falls had all their fires.”
Douglas County had 56 lighting-caused fires, he said.
Normally, the Sweet Home area experiences one to three lightning fires per year, Basting said. Usually, the fires are in a single old-growth tree and are not overly threatening.
Last year Sweet Home had an uncharacteristic 17 lighting fires on Aug. 7. Those fires burned more than 1,000 acres in the Rocky Top area above Green Peter Reservoir.
Three Sweet Home Unit firefighters are working on fires in the Wallowa area right now.