Oregon Fire Fight Hampered by Cooler Weather

KGW TV ^ | 5 August 2002 | GILLIAN FLACCUS

[Grampa Dave]

Fire Fight Hampered by Cooler Weather 08/05/2002

By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer

Firefighters trying to get a line around the massive Florence Fire hoped for rain Monday, but said they were nevertheless making good progress on corralling the blaze with a 200-mile containment line starting at the California border.

The 240,000-acre fire, located in the Siskiyou National Forest in southwestern Oregon, increased Sunday by more than 40,000 acres from burnouts alone, said Tom Valluzzi, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman. Burnouts are fires that are intentionally set behind dirt containment lines by crews hoping to rob the main blaze of its fuel.

Firefighters said they would conduct burns down the ridge to the river that runs behind the Woods' house and then burn another ridge on the other side of the property.

The family has been cutting trees and clearing brush around the ranch for five days and had a sprinkler on the roof, said Susie Wood.

"They said they felt that with the efforts we've been doing, they think we can save our place," she said. "I hope so -- you've got to have a positive attitude."

The ridge fire licked at the base of trunks, sometimes creeping up the sides in short spurts and other times torching the entire tree in seconds. The fire created its own wind that erupted in loud whooshes, like a jet taking off, every time a tree ignited.

Flames jumped around, sometimes crisping one side of a tree and leaving the other untouched, but they did not cross a foot-wide dirt line dug that morning to control the flames.

On the opposite ridge, crews used a new blasting technology to carve out a one- to two-mile containment line for the next day's burnout. Tubes of sausage-shaped explosives were laid down and then detonated from a distance, creating a huge explosion that sent clouds of gray smoke above the tree line.

"It was multiple explosions and it was pretty loud," said Bill Evans, 84, who lives two miles from the blast site. "I thought I'd go out there on my bicycle, but they said no way."

A total of 40 miles have been scorched with drip torches and flare pistols by hand crews working along the fire's eastern flank, where it threatens about 17,000 Illinois Valley residents.

There are about eight more miles to burn before the containment line reaches the California border, where another fire team takes over responsibility, said Tom Knappenberger, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

The Florence Fire was still about one to two miles Sunday from the 41,000-acre Biscuit Fire and fire officials expect the two blazes to merge in the next few days.

"We expect them to and it's OK if they do," said Mike Ferris, Forest Service spokesman. "We've been treating them like one fire already."

The threat to the Illinois Valley has dropped because of progress with burnouts and the cooler weather, said Ferris. A 30-minute evacuation order for 17,000 people was downgraded to a two-hour warning Saturday night, he said. That could be lowered to a 24- or 48-hour notice in the next few days.

"We're feeling pretty good about the reduced threat in these communities. It's starting to look like they have a minimal risk to them," Ferris said.

Meanwhile, another management team handling the fire's western flank from a command post in Gold Beach continued to prepare a containment line around the northern and western sides.

The fire crossed Indigo Creek to the north and was about three miles from Agness, a tiny whitewater outpost, by Sunday. Crews planned to link line from the west and east sides in the next few weeks.

The Bear Camp Highway, which runs from near Grants Pass to Agness, was closed indefinitely at midnight Sunday so it can be used as a secondary containment line around the fire's northern edge, Ferris said.

About $10.1 million has been spent on the Florence fire alone, said Knappenberger, the spokesman. The fire was about 5 percent contained Sunday night.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Online at: http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_0805_news_wildfires_oregon.5d4ed115.html

[Grampa Dave]

Good morning!

This will start the thread on the Fires in Oregon.

According to the Oregonian and Oregon live, these fires don't exist, (At least on their web sites).

[Grampa Dave]

FYI

As usual, news is skimpy. So if you have any up todate personal news or from local sources, please post it.

[joyce11111]

According to the eugene register guard, these fires are due to global warming and past logging practices.

The paper has been running their agenda on the frontpage, two days in a row.

[Grampa Dave]

Fyi and for your ping list

[Grampa Dave]

For those plagued with the enviralists and not living on the West Coast.

[Grampa Dave]

FYI.

Thanks for your pinging

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

Dave - I posted my thread one minute behind yours. Thought you were absent this morning.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

I'm sure the greenies would like to know that their efforts have increased consumption of non renewable fuels. My neighbor can't use his solar power generator because we havn't seeen the sun in a month.

This cat 1 hurricane fire is up to over 300K acres. Wonder how that compares to the state of Rhode Island?

[lady lawyer]

The headline is completely backwards. The cooler weather is helping the firefighters

[Grampa Dave]

07:54 AM • Monday, Crescent City Tripicate, August 5, 2002 Crescent City, CA They're winning the fight on the California side, but still struggling in Oregon Firefighters continue to gain control over Del Norte County's Sour-Biscuit and Shelley Creek fires, but fires burning in Oregon are growing. (link)

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

No - its hampering efforts. They can't start back fires, used to starve a moving fire of fuel. The cool weather will prevent the fire from moving also, but once temps rise, humidity lowers & winds start, we're back to a traveling hurricane.

[Grampa Dave]

Actually, while trying start a lot of backfires over a large area, they want dry weather. So this is a hinderance right now at this stage of containment.

[Grampa Dave]

NO EVACUATIONS YET FOR CURRY COUNTY RESIDENTS Published: August 3, 2002 From the Curry Pilot in Brookings: By Brian Bullock

Residents of Oak Flat and Agness were breathing a bit easier Friday after favorable weather conditions allowed firefighters to begin establishing control lines between their homes and the Florence Fire in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area.

The fire, which began July 13 as one part of a five blaze complex, has become the top priority fire in the nation, burning nearly 170,000 acres.(Link to rest of story)

[madfly]

ping

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Grampa Dave]

The Eugene Register is the Pravda, Oregon, propaganda arm for the Enviralists in Oregon.

Every crackpot enviral scheme to harm America/Americans from Global warming to the Spotted Owl Rural Cleansing is pushed as the Gospel as per the Pravda Register.

What an enviral waste the Register is. Think of all the trees killed for news print, the cost of hauling those mass murdered trees to a pulp mill, the energy costs to make the trees into newspaper pulp, the energy costs to haul that pulp to the a paper maker to make news print, the energy to convert the pulp to newspaper, the energy to haul it to the Eugene register, the energy to unload and store the massive rolls of news print, the energy to print the newspaper, the energy to deliver the Pravda Watermelon to the people of Eugene, the energy to pick up the fish wraps and take them to a costly and high energy conversion plant to convert them to newsprint.

The Pravda Register is a prime example of how all news prints kill trees and waste massive energy to deliver stale Watermelon Agendas. These fishwraps are an enviralmento nightmare.

If the owners, publisher and editors of the Pravda Register really cared about the environment and trees, they would close their doors ASAP and never waste energy on another Pravda Water Agenda Issue.

[Grampa Dave]

Good morning and thanks for the bump!

[blackie]

Stop the attacks by the wacko, extreme left-wing, enviro-nazis terrorist's on our Freedoms !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

[Grampa Dave]

Here is the latest NOAA, weird green, sat image. I have no idea re the date, probably 1 or 2 August. These people fold up shop on the weekend. This image however shows the size of the fires in the Illinois Valley.

[Granof8]

Morning news -

More crews on the way, including one type 1 from Canada. Additional aircraft coming in today. Will be setting up helicopter drop water tanks (mix clorine with water) to prevent spread of cedar root rot disease. Equipment that works in an infected area must be cleaned before going into a non-infected area.

August 4 at 8 p.m. Florence fire at 234,985 acres with 10% contained. Fire growth partially from backburns on the east side. Biscuit fire at 6 a.m. August 4 totaled 41,028 acres in Oregon and California.

Curry County Commissioners expected to declare state of emergency today.

Still concern for Agness area if the fire sweeps north and into that drainage then back into Agness.