Posted on 07/23/2002 7:41:41 AM PDT by Grampa Dave
National Guard troops mop up Winter Fire to free experienced crews
By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press
PAISLEY, Ore. (AP) -- Their cots lined up 12 inches apart, and olive drab tents tautly pitched in a grassy field, National Guard troops tossed footballs, listened to rock and roll and called home on cell phones as they waited to join the battle against forest fires burning across Oregon.
Fresh from training after being called up by Gov. John Kitzhaber, 250 members of the 82nd Armored Cavalry out of Redmond were scheduled to begin mopping up hot spots and smoking stumps in the burned-over fields surrounding homes in the narrow band of flat ground between Winter Ridge and Summer Lake in south central Oregon.
This is the third straight summer members of the 82nd have been called to fire duty, but it is never easy to leave behind family and jobs, said Cpl. Chris Gentemann, 26, of Salem, a machinist.
"The harder we work, the faster we get out of here," said Gentemann, who was eager to see his wife, Christie, and 7-year-old daughter Dallas again soon. "I talk to my wife almost every day. I don't care about the roaming charges."
A pay raise this year bringing guardsmen up to $161 a day while fighting fire makes it easier to leave jobs behind, said Sgt. Duncan MacLean, 37, a Portland welder.
The guardsmen rolled into town on buses Monday as Kitzhaber addressed fire bosses and local citizens at Paisley High School, which is home to the 933 firefighters battling the 32,000-acre Winter Fire. Along with the nearby Tool Box and Silver fires, the complex has burned 94,000 acres of Fremont National Forest, ranchland and U.S. Timberlands stands.
In all 18 fires were actively burning in Oregon covering more than 200,000 acres. All but one were east of the Cascades.
"This is as much a war as the war we are fighting in Afghanistan,' Kitzhaber said Monday after an aerial tour of the Winter Fire and another in Southwestern Oregon, the Squires Peak Fire near the community of Ruch. "Congress has got to put in a permanent appropriation to keep resources coming" for programs to thin national forests to reduce fire danger.
U.S. Forest Service spokesman Rex Holloway said the $321 million Congress appropriated for firefighting nationwide this year has all been spent, and the total bill could reach $1 billion. To make up the shortfall, $60 million in money budgeted for thinning national forests to make them less vulnerable to fire may be diverted to firefighting.
After Kitzhaber left, the fire on the southwest flank took off on a rampage through thousands of acres of beetle-killed timber on the Fremont National Forest, headed toward 30-year-old tree plantations on U.S. Timberlands property, said Incident Commander Jim Mair.
Mair pulled firefighters off the sector for safety, and pushed the estimated Thursday containment date of the Winter fire back indefinitely.
"It's just a tornado moving west," Mair said. "You don't even have to get a wind on it. It just gets up. It's like setting your Christmas tree out with the red needles on it. Cat lines don't mean a thing. The flames just blow across."
In Paisley, Kitzhaber met privately with horse rancher Dan Napier, who lost a hay barn, shop and chicken coop to the flames. Napier believes precious time was lost in launching the firefighting effort as the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry argued over who should take responsibility.
Deputy Incident Commander Danny Benson said he knew of no such delays, adding that the Forest Service and Department of Forestry in the Lakeview region enjoy a good working relationship
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