Oregon wildfires on Wednesday: Gov. Kate Brown says state could see largest losses ever

High temperatures and strong winds on Wednesday continued to create disastrous fire conditions across Oregon, as hundreds of thousands of acres were scorched and thousands fled their homes.

New fires broke out across the state Tuesday, and existing fires were whipped into conflagrations by powerful winds out of the northeast, which pulled warm air from the state’s interior.

Half of Clackamas County was under a must-evacuate order early afternoon Wednesday. At least two people were killed by a separate fire southeast of Salem, family members said.

Gov. Kate Brown said the wildfires could lead to the greatest loss of property and human lives in state history. Firefighters are actively battling 35 fires, she said, and winds continue to feed them. On Tuesday, she declared a statewide emergency as blazes grew in Marion, Lane, Jackson, Coos, Lincoln, Washington and Clackamas counties.

“This is proving to be an unprecedented and significant fire event for our state,” Brown said.

Mariana Ruiz-Temple, chief deputy state fire marshal, said firefighters are still actively fighting the worst fires and “have not been able to get into some of these areas” to see what or who may have been harmed.

The state’s top priority is not fighting fires but getting to people who need assistance evacuating, Ruiz-Temple said.

More than 500 square miles of Oregon are on fire, Brown said.

Nearly all of the state’s half dozen or so biggest fires are zero percent contained, due primarily to hot heavy winds, said Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry.

“Everyone must be on high alert,” given the hot, dry, windy conditions, the governor said. “The next several days are going to be extremely difficult.”Firefighting crews are stretched to their limits, state officials said. Oregon has limited resources to tap in the all-out battle to contain wildfires throughout the state, because national and regional teams are all tied up on various fires at this point, forestry officials told a state board Wednesday morning.

Travis Medema, regional forestry manager for eastern Oregon, told the Board of Forestry during a virtual meeting that the Pacific Northwest and the entire nation are both at preparedness level five, “which means there are literally no resources available” that can be deployed to new or growing fires.

“It has been … absolutely unprecedented in my career and I think all of our careers,” Medema said of the fast-growing wildfires stoked in the last 48 hours by strong east winds and extremely dry weather. Medema said thousands of homes have been destroyed in the fires.

He indicated that at least some Oregonians have died but he did not say how many or offer any details about the deaths. At least two deaths, of a boy and his grandmother, have been reported from the Santiam Canyon fire east of Salem.

State Forester Peter Daugherty acknowledged “a heart-breaking number of homes and businesses” have been lost in fires around the state in the last 48 hours, including in some cases the homes of agency staff. The Forestry Department’s Lyons office was “destroyed last evening,” Daugherty told board members.

Medema said the “catastrophic growth” of the fires is making it difficult to keep accurate tallies of the acres burned. He predicted it “will take days to get accurate information, months to contain fires” and decades for Oregon communities to recover.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday said it had authorized federal funds to help fight three fires: the Holiday Farm fire in Lane County, the Powerline fire in Washington County and the Echo Mountain Complex Fire in Lincoln County.

Mike O’Hare, FEMA’s Region 10 administrator, approved the state’s requests for federal Fire Management Assistance Grants, saying the destruction the fires threaten constitute a “major disaster.”

Santiam and Lionshead fires

The biggest fires in the state were burning in Marion County, where the Santiam (formerly known as the Beachie Creek fire) and Lionshead fires had burned through roughly 200,000 acres of wooded canyonlands. There was no containment on the Santiam fire, as of Tuesday evening. The Lionshead fire was 31% contained.

The first confirmed fire fatalities in Oregon — of a grandmother and grandson — are linked to the blazes.

Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast said authorities expect to find more people killed by the fires.

More than 4,000 people live in towns and homes around Santiam Canyon, along which Oregon 22 winds and curves through Cascades foothills between the Mehama-Lyons area east past the tiny hamlet of Idanha — a stretch of some 30-plus miles in Marion County. It includes Detroit Lake, a popular outdoor recreation area near Mt. Jefferson.

Evacuated areas for the Santiam fire include residents living in the canyon from the community of Mehama east to Detroit — including Mill City, Gates, Detroit, the North Fork corridor, Scotts Mills and south through the Crooked Finger area. They were told to leave immediately. Evacuation orders were expanded early Tuesday to include the area west of the Mehama community to Cascade Highway Southeast and north to Oregon 214.

Residents on standby include those in Stayton, Sublimity, Aumsville, Silverton, Oregon 213 west of Mt. Angel and Silverton to Drakes Crossing. They were told to be ready to go.

The Oregon Department of Transportation reported the following road closures for the Santiam fire:

  • U.S. 20, the Santiam Highway, is open between Sweet Home and Santiam Junction, which is mileposts 33 to 72, but travelers should be aware of numerous lane closures.
  • U.S. 97 between milepost 242 and 241, which is 29 miles south of the intersection with OR 138 East Diamond Lake Highway, is open to escorted traffic, with crews piloting traffic through the fire area.
  • OR 22 remains closed between Stayton and Santiam Junction, milepost 13 to 84.

The Santiam State Forest is closed to all public use, Jason Cox, a Forestry Department spokesman, said midday Wednesday.

Hundreds of displaced people have poured into the Oregon State Fairgrounds over the past two days. Shellshocked Oregonians packed the fairgrounds as Red Cross volunteers gave people food and a counselor tried to help people who had escaped the blazes hours earlier. Some drove their campers into the fairgrounds and others set up tents or stayed in the shelter.

“This is a nightmare,” Barb Mahlum, a Gates resident told The Oregonian/OregonLive after fleeing flames that destroyed her home. “It was my dream house,” she said, “and it’s gone.”

Marion County Commissioner Kevin Cameron fought back tears earlier Wednesday describing his own family’s harrowing escape from wildfires surrounding his rural community of Detroit and other small towns dotting the hills east of Salem.

“The fire on both sides was so hot I thought my car was going to melt,” Cameron said during the county commission’s first meeting since the state’s largest current fires – Santiam and Lionshead – tore through roughly 200,000 acres in the last 72 hours.

The county commissioners and Kast said there’s so much they still don’t know about the extent of the devastation: how many homes and businesses and other structures have been destroyed, how many people have been injured and how many people died in the midst of it all.

Holiday Farm fire

Many were also facing evacuations in Lane County where the Holiday Farm fire had burned more than 126,000 acres as of Wednesday morning, Travis Medema, a state forestry manager, told the state forestry board. The fire began Monday night near Blue River, nestled in the foothills of the Cascades about 50 miles east of Eugene. On Tuesday, fire officials reported it was with 0% contained.

Lane County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky on Tuesday said he had been told about 80 to 100 homes had been lost in the McKenzie River community of Blue River and that he expected the fire to cost lives in the region.

The communities of Blue River, along with Vida, Mohawk, McKenzie Bridge, Leaburg and Walterville were all under varying evacuation orders with residents being told to head to two shelters in Springfield: The Bob Keefer Center at 250 S. 32nd St. and Willamalane Adult Activity Center at 215 W. C St.

Early afternoon Wednesday, Level 3 evacuation notices were also issued for residents of some areas of Springfield and east of Springfield. Those new areas include the Mohawk Valley north of the McKenzie River and east of Marcola Road, including Upper Camp Creek and Camp Creek roads.

Those living off Oregon 126 between Walterville, about five miles east of Springfield’s city limits, and the McKenzie Ranger Station, including all roads to the north and south of the highway, have also been told to leave immediately.

All told, at least 3,000 people in Lane County are currently displaced, Buch said. County officials also anticipate that others have died, she said.

“We don’t know how many are missing or gone,” said Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch. “We can’t yet allow people into the fire area to assess all the damage.”

Lane County officials have opened several centers in Eugene and Creswell to residents seeking to escape high temperatures and heavy smoke in the area: the Lane Events Center, 796 W. 13th Ave., Hilyard Community Center, 2850 Hilyard St., and Petersen Barn Community Center, 870 Berntzen Road, all in Eugene, and the New Hope Baptist Church, 597 S. Front St., in Creswell.

Clackamas County fires

The entirety of Clackamas County was under some level of evacuation order, with officials saying any place in the county not at a Level 2 or 3 evacuation should consider themselves at evacuation Level 1, officials said, meaning be ready for evacuation.

The fires threaten 600 structures, officials said, and have already burned down 22 homes.

About half of the county, including all of Estacada, was under Level 3 notice, meaning “go now.”

The county was tracking at least 10 fires, including four major ones: the Dowty fire, Riverside fire, Unger fire and Wilhoite Fire. Those fires have grown rapidly in the past 24 hours.

The Riverside fire, which started near the Riverside campground along the Clackamas River, had grown to 112,000 acres by Wednesday night as Eastern winds pushed the fire to within two miles of Estacada.

Kaitlynn Byrne, 21 and her girlfriend, Mel Windon, 21, were forced to evacuate Tuesday afternoon with a fire burning just a mile away from their Molalla home. Byrne said that the fire has since spread through her family’s neighborhood. She doesn’t know whether their house made it through.

Byrne grabbed a painting that her grandmother painted of her beloved childhood dog and other photos before leaving the house, but realized after she evacuated that she had left her mother’s wedding dress behind. She had hoped to incorporate the dress into her own wedding.

“There’s a lot of heartbreak going on right now and a lot of emotions,” Byrne said. “But we’re just thankful overall that everybody is safe, all of our family. Knowing everybody is safe is a relief, even if we are sad and devastated by everything that has happened.”

One fire off Oregon 213 and Spangler Road started at 9 p.m. Tuesday after an RV pulling a Jeep emitted sparks, starting a brush fire nearby, according to a tweet from the Clackamas County Sheriff Office. The fire burned 10 acres of brush and spread to a motor home and a nearby house. Two homes were lost, according to a tweet from the Clackamas Fire District #1.

Evacuation orders have been issued for huge swaths of the southwest and central areas of the county stretching nearly from Estacada on the north and along much of the Clackamas River, to the southern border of the county and west past the Marion County line. Evacuations are in place for Redland and Potter Road east of Oregon City, Unger Road in the Colton area, Wilhoit and Bird Road in the Molalla area and the Job Corps at Ripplebrook in the Mount Hood National Forest.

Dina Renken had to borrow a car so she and her mother could evacuate her home in Molalla. The pair decided to leave after the skies over their Clackamas County home turned bright red and darkened during the middle of the day.

“The sky was bright red, you could tell fire was coming in,” Renken said. “At 3:30 in the afternoon it was like it was 8:30 at night.”

She said she wasn’t sure whether her home survived but hasn’t had much time to think about it amid the chaos of needing to evacuate.

“We don’t know anything,” Renken said. “It was scary. I’ve only seen it on TV and I never thought it would happen to me. I didn’t know what to do.”

Renken spent the night at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, trying to sleep in the car with her mother and cat, Louis. Renken has a compromised immune system and her mother is older so they opted for the car over an indoor shelter due to worries about COVID-19. Renken said she is hoping to find a hotel to avoid another night spent in the car.

Washington County fires

A blaze in rural Washington County has torched as many as 2,000 acres, authorities said Wednesday morning. The fire was estimated at 50% contained by Wednesday night.

The five-alarm Chehalem Mountain-Bald Peak fire spanned parts of Washington and Yamhill County. At least three barns had caught fire but Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue said Wednesday that it had no reports of injuries to livestock or people and said no homes had burned.

Residents on Southwest Buckhaven Road, north to Southwest McCormick Hill Road up to Vanderscheure Road and Southwest Neugebauer Road were subject to evacuation orders Wednesday morning.

The separate Powerline fire near Hagg Lake prompted evacuations for residents of Dundee Road, Southwest Patton Valley Road, Southwest Lee Road and Southwest Cascara Road. The city of Cherry Grove had also been told to evacuate Tuesday.

Southwest South Road between Northwest Mount Richman Road has been placed on level 2 orders — meaning they should be ready to evacuate at any time.

County officials said the blaze may be burning 50 acres and be as much as 50% contained, but dense forest lands made it difficult to gauge.

Westside Commons, formerly the Washington County Fairgrounds, is accepting animals whose owners have fled the Chehalem Mountain-Bald Peak or Powerline fire. The Washington County Sheriff’s Posse, a volunteer group, will care for animals overnight if need be but owners must come by each day to help. Campsites and recreational vehicle spots are available to fire evacuees.

“Fairgrounds facilities have a long history of providing aid when there is an emergency need, and we want to do all that we can to help those forced to evacuate as a result of these wildfires,” said Leah Perkins-Hagele, who manages Westside Commons. Those seeking care for their animals should call 503-314-3433 before they arrive.

Mount Hood fires

All recreation and public access is temporarily off limits on Mount Hood, as wildfires continue to burn around Oregon’s tallest peak.

The Mount Hood National Forest announced a forestwide closure Tuesday, due to “the threat of unprecedented and dangerous fire conditions,” caused by widespread heat and dryness, and unusually high winds that whipped across the region Monday and Tuesday.

The closure applies to all forms of recreation, including hiking, boating and camping, on all forest lands on Mount Hood. The Willamette National Forest issued a similar forest-wide closure Tuesday. Campgrounds and hiking trails on Mount Hood were evacuated safely, and visitors are currently out of the national forest or making their way out, spokeswoman Heather Ibsen said Wednesday.

Timberline Lodge on Wednesday said that it would suspend all outdoor operations and close its day lodge, as the hotel remains open for current guests and those with existing reservations. Mt. Hood Skibowl has shut down operations and on Wednesday said it will evaluate the situation every 24 hours. Mount Hood Meadows remains closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Portland General Electric cut off power to some customers on Mount Hood on Monday night as a precaution against electrical caused wildfires, and said customers could be without power for 24 to 48 hours. Unplanned outages caused by high winds and fallen trees also plagued the area. On Wednesday, more than 6,000 customers near Mount Hood were without power, according to Portland General Electric’s outages map.

As of Wednesday morning, there were three wildfires actively burning in the Mount Hood National Forest. The biggest is the Riverside fire, which started near the Riverside campground along the Clackamas River and increased quickly Tuesday, growing to more than 20,000 acres overnight.

The other two fires in the national forest are less concerning, Ibsen said. The White River fire, which started Aug. 17 and grew to more than 17,000 acres, is now 70% contained. The Hood Meadows fire, found burning near a ski area on the southeast flank of the mountain Monday, is now less than two acres in size.

Glendower and Almeda fires

A fire that began Tuesday morning in Ashland quickly spread north, carving a path of destruction through Talent and Phoenix and edging into the southern part of Medford by Wednesday.

Thousands have been told to evacuate in southern Oregon as strong winds fed the Almeda fire. The blaze has leveled hundreds of homes and wiped out businesses in a region that’s home to more than 80,000 people.

State officials late in the day closed Interstate 5 between the north Medford and Central Point interchanges, Exits 30 and 33.

Ashland Mayor John Stromberg told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday that the fire mostly spared the city but spread north in Jackson County.

Ashland’s interim city administrator Adam Hanks told the mayor and City Council in a message early Wednesday that city workers who live in the surrounding region have been hit hard. Many lost their homes, he wrote.

“Fires are not at all out in Talent and Phoenix and the destruction is horribly significant,” Hanks said in his email to city leaders, adding that winds are expected to settle as the afternoon approaches. “This is the beginning of a very long haul for the region.”

Medford Mayor Gary Wheeler said the fire spread north from Ashland on Tuesday and has reached the southern edge of his city.

“Basically, it looks like Phoenix and Talent are pretty well devastated,” he said. “It looks like a lot of damage for those little towns.”

He said the fire moved north along the Bear Creek Greenway, a public path that extends from Ashland to Central Point. The fire is within Medford city limits and burning in the area that is home to the city’s youth sports complex. He said it has not spread into residential areas.

“It’s getting very close into the business area and our parks,” he said. “It’s a matter of how we stop it and make things slow down a little bit. Fortunately, the winds have dropped a little bit.”

Wheeler urged local residents to conserve water so pressure remains strong for fire suppression efforts. He also urged calm.

Phoenix Mayor Chris Luz said early Wednesday that his town, home to roughly 4,650 people just south of Medford in Jackson County, has been decimated by fire.

“Many businesses have been burned down,” he said. “Certain neighborhoods, including my own, have been burned down. There are many, many, many homes that are gone.”

He estimated that a dozen or so businesses, including restaurants and shops, along the main thoroughfare in town were destroyed.

Sandra Spelliscy, city manager of Talent, home to 6,465, said she saw breathtaking destruction as she surveyed the community early Wednesday.

She said she toured two senior communities of manufactured homes in the morning. One had about 65 homes; all were destroyed. A second one had about 160 homes, of which 21 survived.

“There are certain neighborhood where there is just literally nothing standing,” Spelliscy said.

She said parts of the community resemble “pictures we have all seen on TV, where it looks like a bomb blast that has just leveled everything. There is literally nothing standing except chimneys and a burned-out relic of a water heater or a burned-out car.”

An 950-resident senior living facility in southern Medford evacuated because of the blaze.

The corporate offices of Harry & David are located in the area of Medford where the fire threatened to advance. Company executives issued a statement saying the corporate campus is closed “until we can confirm that all danger has passed.” The campus wasn’t damaged by fire.

Lincoln and Tillamook county fires

Several wildfires burning near the Oregon Coast have forced immediate evacuations in a swath of Lincoln City.

Two large fires burning in Lincoln County, the Echo Mountain fire and the Kimberling fire, have together grown to about 1,000 acres, driven by east winds of 30 to 50 mph. An ember ignited a grassfire at the Chinook Winds golf course north of Lincoln City.

Officials ordered anyone north of Northwest 40th Street in Lincoln City to leave immediately. The Level 3 evacuation notice — meaning “go now” — includes anyone between the coast and East Devil’s Lake Road. Additionally, all of East Devil’s Lake Road is ordered to leave immediately.

An evacuation point has been established at Oregon Coast Community College in South Beach. Buses for evacuees are available at Safeway and the Lincoln City Community Center. Chinook Winds Casino Resort, which had been serving as a temporary evacuation point, has now itself been evacuated.

People south of 40th Street to the Lincoln City Outlets are under Level 2 evacuation orders — meaning “get set” and be prepared to leave immediately.

Fires have closed Oregon 18 at Milepost 7, and U.S. 101 is closed from Gleneden Beach to Lincoln City. Fires are burning on both sides of Oregon 18 near Otis, according to local officials.

The blazes forced the immediate evacuations from U.S. 101 east to the area of Rose Lodge overnight and had already prompted immediate evacuations from U.S. 101 and connecting streets east to the area of Rose Lodge. The county is posting evacuation areas on its website and on an interactive map.

Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital has shut down. Officials there made the decision to close at 9 a.m. and move patients to Newport.

People trying to evacuate have jammed highways in the area. Shelia Orwoll said she was trying to leave Roads End in the north of Lincoln City but sat in her car for two hours on the highway before parking at a beach access point where she could abandon her car and flee to the ocean.

“I’m just sitting here looking at the ocean and looking in my rear view mirror to see if the fire comes over the hill,” she said. “They say ‘go,’ but I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.”

The Pike fire, which started Monday in Tillamook County, had burned through at least 150 acres and resulted in Level 3 “go now” evacuation orders Wednesday morning for areas from Waltz Hill Road to Baseline Road, Baseline Road to Bewley Road and Bewley Road to Vaughn Road. Evacuation orders also included Willowbrook Drive, Timberline Road, Salmonberry Road and Pike Road, according to the sheriff’s office.

Those orders remained in effect and expanded Wednesday evening to include Kilchis Park.

Shifting winds have made it difficult for firefighters to contain any part of the blaze, the sheriff’s office said. At least four prison crews, as well as state and local firefighters, are battling the fire.

Evacuees were told to go to the Tillamook County Fairgrounds in the city of Tillamook.

Douglas County fires

Douglas County is under a state of emergency as multiple wildfires are burning in the area, county commissioners announced Wednesday. The whole county is under various levels of evacuation orders.

Three fires near French Creek, Archie Creek and Star Mountain along Oregon 138 have caused immediate, Level 3 “go now” evacuations in several areas, home to more than 1,000 people.

Glide and Idleyld Park, northeast of Roseburg including all people on all roads along Oregon 138 from milepost 17 to milepost 47, Diamond Lake, and the town of Sutherlin on Nonpariel Road from Gassy Creek west are all under Level 3 evacuations.

The order expanded late Wednesday evening to include all of Dry Creek, including Felix Flat Lane, Elk Ridge Lane, Happy Creek Lane and Illahee Road.

A Level 2 “be set” notice is in effect for all people on the south side of Nonpareil Road from Plat K Road east to Banks Creek in east Sutherlin. The notice includes Fraser Canyon and all side streets east to Banks Creek.

The rest of Douglas County is under a Level 1 evacuation order, meaning “get ready.”

A Red Cross shelter is set up at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Roseburg for evacuees.

Relief can’t come soon enough

Officials said the unprecedented pace of spread of the state’s numerous fires was the result of a “once in a generation” weather event that combined strong winds, with gusts up to 60 or 60 mph, with warm air, pulled over the Cascades by winds out of the northeast, but scientists have long warned that increasing temperatures caused by climate change would produce wildfires that burned hotter and longer. Coupled with aggressive suppression tactics over the last century that have left woodlands overloaded with fuel, forests in the western U.S. are primed to burn.

Add in the type of weather Oregon has seen over the last two days, hot and windy, and it takes little more than a spark to set off an inferno.

Still, Doug Grafe of the Oregon Department of Forestry said conditions were expected to be more favorable Wednesday, with winds dropping to 10 to 15 miles per hour, but with 25 mile per hour gusts, possibly giving fire crews a window of opportunity to shift from evacuating residents to gaining some containment on the numerous blazes throughout the state.

“The weather system we’ve been experiencing for the last 48 hours is expected to break down on Thursday, which will give us the opportunity to shift strategies as far as life safety,” he said. “Thursday is really our turning point to go on the offensive, if you will.”

Read more:

Hillary Borrud, Noelle Crombie, Jeff Manning, Mike Rogoway, Jamie Hale, Brooke Herbert, Andrew Theen, K. Rambo, Jayati Ramakrishnan and Elliot Njus contributed to this report.

-- Kale Williams; kwilliams@oregonian.com; 503-294-4048; @sfkale

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