Homes south of Agness, Oregon get orders to evacuate

The Curry County sheriff gave evacuation notices to residents of 30 homes three miles south of Agness late Thursday evening as the Biscuit fire continued its rapid spread north.

The fire came within three-fourths of a mile of the Oak Flats and Spud Road areas near Agness, a community of 150 along the Rogue River, said Dick Fleishman, a fire information officer. Officials decided to give evacuation notices in the area while it was still light out.

They did not include Agness, which remains under a pre-evacuation notice, Fleishman said.

Fire officials also decided Thursday to update plans to close the Rogue River to rafts and other river traffic if the Biscuit fire burns into the Rogue River Canyon.

But a decision to close the river is not imminent, they said. Fire managers plan to meet again Saturday to consider the plans and assess the fire threat.

"We need to plan for the worst case scenario," said Susan Mathison, a fire information officer. "There are contingencies in case the need should arise to protect the safety of our visitors."

Typically, 350 to 400 rafters and others who are on the river each day would have to be notified and helped out in the event of an evacuation order, Mathison said.

The nearly 400,000-acre Biscuit fire, Oregon's largest wildfire in more than a century, burned within approximately 10 miles of the section of the Rogue National Wild and Scenic River popular with river rafters. At its closest, the fire is within four miles of the river.

Officials called off a scheduled burnout of as much as 25,000 acres planned for Thursday night aimed at stopping the fire short of the Rogue and other scenic areas on the Biscuit's northern edge. Intense heat and low humidity had stoked the fire and could make the burnout difficult to control, said Tom Villuzzi, fire spokesman.

For the second consecutive day, the fire put up a huge smoke column that was visible for miles, he said. A shift to winds from the west, which occurred late Thursday, could drive the fire into the proposed burnout area, reducing or even eliminating the need for a separate burnout.

Another fire, the East Antelope fire in Jackson County, had grown to 1,550 acres and kicked up smoke that could be seen in Ashland, where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is under way.

The fire was nearly five miles northeast of Ashland, burning toward the south in the Grizzly Peak area, but it posed no threat to the town or the festival, said Dennis Turco, an Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman.

Turco said residents of a dozen homes on the Dead Indian Memorial Road, about two miles south of the fire, were advised the fire posed a potential threat. Nearly 450 firefighters battled the blaze, backed by air tankers and helicopters.

A burnout planned on the western edge of the East Antelope fire Thursday night, aimed at depriving the fire of fuel, was expected to be easily seen in Ashland, officials said.

On the Biscuit fire, the concern over closing the Rogue brought representatives of several agencies to Gold Beach to discuss contingency plans. They included the Curry County sheriff's office, the Oregon Department of Transportation, the firefighting command, and local fire departments, including those from Gold Beach and Pistol River.

"Fire conditions do not warrant closing of the river at this point," said Mathison, a retired U.S. Forest Service official. But she said if the fire threatens the canyon, officials need to know "how to get rafters out" and how to handle evacuation traffic.

"We understand the grave impact -- economic and personal impact -- if we close the river for even a short time," she said. "Folks have waited years to get their permits" for the river.

Mathison said officials have a record of everyone entering the canyon, and all would have to be located.

Fire officials have plotted various points for the fire that would trigger an official response, such as a pre-evacuation warning or even an evacuation.

Mathison said the contingency planning would include possibly closing the scenic portion of the river to everyone at once or closing the river to new traffic while allowing those on the river to complete their trips.

The typical rafting trip is from three to five days, beginning at Grave Creek and leaving the river at Foster Bar, about four miles upstream from Agness.

Meanwhile, structural fire crews stood by at threatened homes and other buildings in Agness to the north and Pistol River to the west. The most intense burning on the Biscuit fire occurred Thursday in the area of Snow Camp Mountain, where a fire lookout was destroyed earlier in the week.

The Biscuit fire was considered 28 percent contained, meaning firefighters still must establish reliable containment lines around most of the fire. Officials said 100 miles of fire line remained to be constructed.

The second-largest fire still burning in the state, the 48,000-acre Tiller complex in Douglas County, was 41 percent contained but moving to the northwest. A contingent of 540 soldiers from Fort Riley, Kan., planned to return to Fort Riley after working on the fire for two weeks. R. Gregory Nokes: 503-221-8409; gregnokes@news.oregonian.com

Here is an interesting stat that Andy Kerr, Katzntaxer, Katzzie, the ONRC and all card carrying greens can be happy about:

Oregon again listed as hungriest state in nation

The Associated Press, 8/16/02 3:38 AM

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- Six out of every 100 households in Oregon are going hungry, the highest rate in the nation, according to a new study.

It is the second time in three years Oregon has been named as the hungriest state in the nation.

Oregon also ranks as the third worst state in terms of food security, according to the study released Thursday by the Food Security Institute at the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

"By any calculation, there are too many hungry people and that's unacceptable," said Pam Curtis, a health policy adviser in the office of the governor.

At the root of the problem, state and local officials said, is Oregon's stubborn recession, which has produced the highest unemployment rate in the country.

Even those with jobs said they are struggling.

Reagan Fischer, 25, of Salem, works at a fast-food outlet but seeks the help of St. Vincent de Paul, a local food bank, every two months. "I don't make enough," she said. "I don't have kids so I don't qualify for food stamps."

She said after taxes, she barely has enough to get by from paycheck to paycheck.

Ana Rivera, 30, of Salem, a mother of three, also gets help from St. Vincent de Paul even though her husband works in nurseries and does landscaping.

"Sometimes we don't have enough money to buy food," she said. "My husband pays the rent, bills, car insurance ... we don't have enough sometimes."

Researchers used population and U.S. Department of Agriculture food security data to show the percentage of households in each state considered "hungry" or "food insecure.

A hungry household is one whose members often feel pain because of a lack of food. A food-insecure household is one whose members don't know where their next meal is coming from.

According to the study, 6.2 percent of Oregon households were in a state of hunger from 1998 through 2000, the period covered by the study.

It showed 14.3 percent of Oregon households were food-insecure -- the third highest rate after New Mexico and Texas.

Margaret Grant, executive director of Marion-Polk Food Share, said the food bank has seen steady increases in demand since 1996, the first year Oregon was found to have high hunger rates.

Since 1996, the demand for help from the food bank has increased by more than 10 percent each year and in the past 12 months, it has had a 15 percent hike - its largest yet.

The Club Sierrians, Andy Kerr, the ONRC, Dirt Firsters and various Green Jihadists are starving Oregon with their rabid no harvesting of trees cult/agenda. Kitz and Katz have enabled this anti job green behavior.

Remove all the green scum from power, and you will see a rebound in jobs and innocent people in Oregon will not be going hungry.

Every GD tree hugger should be arrested for child abuse when they keep legal trees from being harvested. The tree huggers are nothing but foot soldier watermelons working against capitalism. Time to thin out the green herd by removing them from power and arresting them for endangering the Oregon population with their agendas/tactics.

Just more Rural and semi urban cleansing by the very evil new Nazis of America, the Green Eco Nazis of Oregon!

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