Posted on 07/19/2002 12:20:25 PM PDT by Grampa Dave
Officials say large fires may merge
By
7/19/02 10:34 AM
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Two of the largest wildfires in southern Oregon had nearly merged Friday as the total acreage burned since lightning strikes touched off blazes around the state last weekend reached 191,000 acres.
The Tool Box Complex and the Winter Complex were being closely monitored as crews were trying to stop flames from crossing Oregon Highway 31 and heading east into the high desert.
The Toolbox Fire had burned 44,300 acres by Thursday night near the town of Paisley north of Klamath Falls.
The blaze had spread to within half a mile of the 29,300 acre Winter Fire, said David Widmark of the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland.
Fire crews went door-to-door to the 30 homes in the Ana Reservoir neighborhood Wednesday evening to alert Paisley-area residents to the danger and recommend they prepare for evacuation, said Tim Birr, a Portland metro area firefighter serving as part of the state fire marshal's wildfire management task force.
"Four people went to a Red Cross shelter we set up in Christmas Valley but the vast majority of residents remained at home," Birr said.
Across the southern and northeastern areas of the state, other pockets of rural homes and some ranches continued to be threatened by wildfires that have burned across sections of remote desert and rugged mountain forest.
Officials at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said Oregon had become the nation's top fire-fighting priority as the wildfire season got one of its earliest starts during a month when the fire danger typically is much lower.
"In my 35 years in the Forest Service, this is the most activity I've ever seen," Widmark added.
Firefighters on Friday will have to work without the aid of air tankers and smokejumpers, which will be grounded for 24 hours because of Thursday's air tanker crash at a wildfire in northern Colorado, Widmark said.
Eleven air tankers have been rotating among the top priority fires in Oregon.
But more manpower is on the way: an Army battalion, the Oregon National Guard and prison inmate crews have been called to join firefighters from state and federal agencies, along with private contractors, as managers shifted resources around the West to take on the worst blazes of early summer.
Ten Oregon crews fighting fires in other Western states are expected home by the weekend to join firefighters arriving from eight other states, including 650 Army soldiers from a base in Kansas due by the end of the month.
Six miles north of Paisley, Summer Lake Hot Springs managers Diana Hash and her husband remained at the hot spring and RV resort even as flames from the Winter fire surged across the low hills and desert two miles away.
"The firefighters have done an amazing job. For the last four days, it has sounded like a war zone with the double prop helicopters," Hash said.
Hash said every evening they have been able to sit on their back porch at night and watch the flames devour the sagebrush, juniper and ponderosa pine.
"We look through a night vision scope and the flames are just everywhere. Every now and then you see huge fires shoot up in the air, and that is when trees are going up," Hash said.
Mornings have been the worst, she added.
"When you get up it smells like you have been standing around a campfire for a week. The air is filled with smoke. Our eyes have been burning, and we have scratchy throats."
That includes you, Archie Bunker On Steroids and your family.
THANK YOU, YOU GREENIE BA$TARDS, FOR MAKING ALL THIS POSSIBLE!!!!!!
EBUCK
Say it again. It can NEVER be said too often.
The truth needs to be driven home on a daily basis, till there's no doubt in anyone's mind who the REAL culprits are here.
My prayers go to the people of Klamath Falls, who faught so hard for their right to water...only to face THIS. I know the feeling.
EBUCK
EBUCK
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