Category Archives: Forest Fires

WASHINGTON — The Department of Natural Resources shared an update regarding the ongoing fires in the county. The Chinook and Brix Fires make up the Chinook Complex in Pacific County. The fires are burning in logging slash, steep previously harvest slopes, as well as in young timber stands and small pockets of mature timber on private land. The Chinook Fire started on Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at approximately 11:00am and the Brix Fire started late Thursday evening on November 17, 2022. Due to the increased size and complexity of the Chinook Fire a Washington DNR Type III Incident Management Team has been put in place. The Chinook Fire is approximately 139 acres in size and is currently 43 percent contained. …The fires are believed to be Human Caused.

It’s been three months since the Cedar Creek Fire started burning in the Willamette National Forest east of Oakridge. Fire managers now say the blaze is mostly out.  Officially, the lightning-sparked fire is around 70% contained. But public information officer Bud Sexton said for the most part, the recent rainfall and cooler temperatures mean flames are no longer actively burning.  “People might see some occasional smoke here and there,” he said. “But that’s all part of the natural process of the fire as it continues to receive more rainfall.”  The fire burned more than 127,000 acres and caused the evacuation of Oakridge for a few days in September. Though the community was largely spared from any damage, smoke continued to plague the area through much of October.

EUGENE, California — Firefighters battling the Cedar Creek Fire are praying for rain this weekend, and hopefully just the right amount of it. The approaching rainy weather is expected to be the beginning of the end for the Cedar Creek Fire, which has been burning west of Oakridge since being started by a lightning strike Aug. 1. With the rain could come a cooling of the fire interior, a reduction in smoky conditions affecting swaths of Oregon and firefighter resources beginning to demobilize. Fire managers are “cautiously optimistic” the rain expected to come as early as Friday will be a soaking, “season ending” rain, according to Eric Hendrickson. …The Cedar Creek Fire was an estimated 126,690 acres Thursday and was 50% contained with 555 people assigned to it. …Because fire activity in the fire’s interior is still high, Knudsen said smoke may continue affecting the area for a while.

Authorities announced significant evacuations in the vicinity of the Nakia Creek Fire in Southwest Washington. Some 400 acres were burning and approximately 1,000 homes may be affected by the evacuation order. Meanwhile, much of the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades was experiencing poor air quality over the weekend because of smoke amid windy, dry, unseasonably warm weather. In Washington, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency said the region had air quality ratings ranging from unhealthy to unhealthy for sensitive groups. …The conditions, which also prompted red flag warnings for increased fire danger, were expected to continue through Sunday. …A new fire ignited Saturday northwest of Portland near Fishhawk Lake, according to state Forestry officials. It wasn’t threatening any structures. Nine other fires were burning throughout the Northwest in one of the driest periods on record.

Additional coverage in Wildfire Today, by Bill Gabbert: Strong winds spread fires in Western Washington

Washington—About a hundred homes in eastern Clark County are under Level 1 — ‘be ready’ — evacuation orders because of the fire on Larch Mountain. Officials say just over a dozen homes are under Level 2 — ‘get set’ — orders. The ‘Nakia Creek Fire’ that started on Sunday has tripled in size, reaching about 250 acres by Monday night. Despite some extreme fire behavior Monday, crews said they were making good progress on containing it. As of Tuesday morning, there were no mandatory evacuations in place. Residents can get the latest evacuation information by signing up for Clark Regional Public Alerts. Officials say that all access between the L-1600 Road at the Jones Creek ORV Trailhead and the L-1500 Road at Four Corners is closed. All motorized trails in the Jones Creek and Hagen Creek systems, as well as the Larch Mountain Trailhead, also are closed.

Containment strategies around the Cedar Creek Fire burning east of Oakridge are expected to remain fairly constant through the weekend as a new team takes over.  Easterly winds blowing over the fire Wednesday evening into Thursday morning stirred up some of the fire’s interior but didn’t greatly challenge firefighters’ containment lines, said Northwest Incident Management Team 9 Public Information Officer Eric Hendrickson. Firefighters expect to continue strengthening those lines over the weekend.  A new incident management teamplans to take over control of the fire after the weekend, and Hendrickson said it’s unlikely firefighting strategies will shift during the transition. Along with strengthening lines, Hendrickson said firefighters are working to analyze where hazards, such as downed trees, can be removed to give them better access to the wildfire.

CLARK COUNTY, Washington — This evening Clark Regional Emergency Services sent out an emergency notification to about 110 homes within the designated zones set by the Incident Management Team as a precautionary measure. …The wildfire burning on the southwest side of Larch Mountain, north of Washougal, Wash., has burned approximately 150 acres as of Monday morning, the Washington Department of Natural Resources said. Crews first responded to the fire at 4:37 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Now named the Nakia Creek Fire, the wildfire is burning in grass and brush. Air resources will be assigned to the fire Monday morning, the DNR said in a post on Twitter. Crews will fight the fire throughout the day using resources in the air and on the ground.

SAN FRANCISCO — A major storm that battered western Alaska over the weekend churned through Northern California on Monday after bringing early-season snow to mountains and dropping rain that helped firefighters increase their containment of a huge wildfire. No growth was reported on the 119-square-mile Mosquito Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento. The blaze was 38% contained Monday after downpours allowed sheriff’s officials in two counties to lift or downgrade some evacuation orders. It’s the state’s largest wildfire of the year so far. More rain was expected, which fire spokesman Scott McLean called a mixed blessing for firefighters. “It did help a bit to stifle that aggressive fire,” McLean said. “But we’re going to have new safety issues now with all the mud that’s out there. And the ground moisture could cause some of those damaged trees to fall over.”

OREGON—Cedar Creek Fire managers planned Saturday morning to burn more unburnt areas on the fire’s perimeter, continuing a strategy begun after a dangerous east wind event ended last weekend and the weather began to get cooler and wetter. The Cedar Creek Fire has been burning east of Oakridge since it was sparked by lightning at the beginning of August, but rapidly spread west between Sept. 9 and Sept. 10 when winds came in from the east. The greater Oakridge-Westfir area was threatened during that time, and residents were put under a Level 3 (Go Now) evacuation order Friday. The threat decreased when winds died down, but High Prairie, Oakridge and Westfir areas remain at Level 1 (Be Ready). The Cedar Creek Fire was 0% contained as of Saturday morning, but increased moisture over the coming days should allow firefighters to reach some level of containment on the northwest side of the fire to protect the Oakridge area

A fire in Northern California grew overnight after dry winds Tuesday fanned flames, making the blaze the largest in the state so far this year. The Mosquito Fire, which started Sept. 6, spread nearly 10,000 acres (4,046.9 hectares) and now covers a footprint of 58,544 acres in El Dorado and Placer counties, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. The blaze was 49,761 acres Tuesday. Burning east of Sacramento, the fire had forced 11,277 people to be evacuated and was 20% contained as of Tuesday morning, according to Cal Fire. It has destroyed at least 64 buildings and threatens nearly 6,000. …“The fire area remains a dynamic situation that may change at any time, as evidenced by the fire activity on Tuesday afternoon,” Cal Fire said. Evacuation orders remain in force.

A western Montana wildfire has spread over 1,000 acres, tearing through Helena National Forest. The No Grass Creek Fire is located in the Helena Ranger District, an area that has experienced large amounts of tree mortality. The 1,003-acre blaze is 0% contained and the Powell County Sheriff’s Office said resources on the fire have been assessing values at risk. Because of the current state of the dead timber in the area, the forest service said that it is “neither safe nor effective to put fire personnel into the area.” “Fire personnel are managing from the air, while other firefighters are observing the fire’s progression, activity and overall behavior within the planning area from various vantage points on the district,” it said. In addition, due to the remote location of the fire, no homes or private property are threatened by the fire, allowing the fire to naturally function and provide ecological benefits. 

As cooler weather and cloudy skies moved into the North State on Sunday, firefighters continued to tighten their grip on fires in the region. Five significant fires still burned in the region, burning a total of about 57,500 acres as of Sunday morning. The total number of acres burned rose 1,073 acres from what was reported Saturday night. The percentage of containment on those blazes also rose from an average of about 63% to about 65% from Saturday to Sunday, according to fire officials. After record-breaking high temperatures that reached 115 degrees last week in Redding, the high temperature Monday was expected to be in the low 90s with highs in the 80s for the rest of the week. Here is a breakdown of acreage burned and percent containment on the five fires…