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This is a KGW report on the fire as it came close to Agness, yesterday:

'The Beast': Town Faces Fire
08/18/2002

By JOHN ENDERS, Associated Press Writer

AGNESS, Ore. -- Things had calmed down a bit along Oak Flat and the nearby town of Agness, a resort and fishing village on southern Oregon's Rogue River. Homeowners, told to evacuate Thursday, were watching the Biscuit fire, hoping for the best.

Then the fire exploded.

Within an hour Saturday afternoon, the northwest flank of the fire blew up, raising huge billowing white and brown plumes of smoke 20,000 to 30,000 feet into the air. The "thwop, thwop, thwop" of heavy-lift helicopters filled the normally placid skies above the river.

"Normally, it's pretty stress-free living," said Gayle Soule, owner of the Old Agness Store.

These days, stress is not unusual for those who live in the path of Oregon's Biscuit Fire, the largest wildfire in Oregon in a century and the largest fire burning in North America.

"When you go to sleep at night and you hear helicopters, and fire trucks..." she said.

By Saturday evening, the Biscuit Fire had burned 419,000 acres, and more than 6,500 people were fighting it, including 470 Canadians, 39 Australians and nine fire managers from New Zealand.

Burning since a lightning storm moved through the area July 13, the fire has had several names: Florence, Sour Biscuit, and Biscuit.

Some residents have begun calling it "the Beast." One L.A. reporter referred to it recently as a "sleeping dragon."

"We don't want to call it a beast," said fire information office Wayne Johnson. "Beast implies something bad. This isn't something bad, necessarily."

Fire ecologists say fire is a natural event, and is needed to keep America's forests healthy, especially wilderness. The fire has burned over much of the nearby Kalmiopsis Wilderness, and now it's threatening homes and businesses in Agness, Ilahe, Oak Flat, upper Pistol River, upper Chetco River, Cave Junction, O'Brien, Selma.

Across America, 24 major active fires were burning. More than 5.7 million acres have burned this summer, and the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon have suffered the biggest wildfires in their history, according to fire information officer Peter D'Aquanni.

The Biscuit fire, because of its size and complexity, is divided into four divisions, with separate top-level "Type 1" command centers.

"I've never been on a fire where they've had four Type 1 management teams on it. It really is just a management feat managing the resources," D'Aquanni said.

Residents of the area stood by, waiting to see if they would have to abandon their homes to the flames over the weekend. About a dozen helicopters buzzed in the air overhead, dumping fire retardant and water.

A half mile up the road, 40-year old Shawn O'Connor rakes and gathers pine needles and other burnable materials from the land around her home. She's been doing it for three weeks.

"Nobody in our neighborhood is leaving" O'Connor said. "We're just kind of waiting to see."

But if the fire gets too close, she will grab her 13-year old son Shila and a neighbor and head out.

She and her neighbors are watching the fire "in a state of controlled hysteria," she said. They also watch the wind, which this afternoon has picked up, but is blowing upstream, away from their house. They wait. Sometimes wind is a friend; sometimes it's your worst adversary.

"When you feel the wind, you don't know whether to be glad or scared," O'Connor said.

"I can't blame the fire. It's just what happens. You pay your money, you takes your chances," said John Lighty, 68, who lives with his wife Merilee in a house on Oak Flat Road several miles from Agness.

Their home is one of two that are closest to the fire, which is burning toward them about a mile away, just around a bend in the Illinois River.

The house is older, and has shake wood roof and siding, a wood deck and dense trees and shrubs all around. One forester describes it "indefensible."

"If it's going to burn down," Merilee Lighty says, "I wish it'd hurry up and do it."

Now we learn that there are Fire Ecologists to go with their fellow Insane Green Jihadists:

"Fire ecologists say fire is a natural event, and is needed to keep America's forests healthy, especially wilderness. The fire has burned over much of the nearby Kalmiopsis Wilderness, and now it's threatening homes and businesses in Agness, Ilahe, Oak Flat, upper Pistol River, upper Chetco River, Cave Junction, O'Brien, Selma."

How about throwing these Fire Ecologists in the path of the still burning fire with a hoedad and a canteen of water. Then tell them, that they will be picked up this fall/winter when the fire goes out due to the fall/winter rains. If they burn up, just remember that in their Druid Religion, fire is good!

This paragraph proves my thesis that the Green Jihadists are Criminally insane. They even have Fire Ecologists