©Oregon Dept Forestry

…Like many states, Oregon is coming off a warm winter that did little to fill the reservoirs of snow that melt in the spring and summer and refresh downstream forestlands. That dryness makes kindling – or “fuels” in the firefighting community – out of brush, shrubs, plants, small trees and the like. About 86% of the state is currently facing drought conditions, according to a June 26 report from the Oregon Water Resources Department. Several counties – a belt stretching from Douglas and Lane counties to Umatilla and Union counties – are facing “extreme” drought conditions. “There was no snow this year,” Craig Pettinger, a unit forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry said. “All those fuels that are usually buried under a blanket of snow, they’ve had sun on them for months.” Firefighters train for worst-case scenarios. On June 26, roughly 200 wildland firefighting trainees completed a five-day academy, which culminated in a controlled burn near the lower Santiam River.