With deadly wildfires still raging around Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown announced first good fire-related news in days: The weather conditions that fueled the fires' rapid spread have broken and firefighters report they can tell the difference, she said.
Still, Brown said: “Well over 1 million acres have burned.”
And she said first responders are dealing with reports that “dozens” of Oregonians are reported missing in Jackson, Lane and Marion counties.
More than a half dozen of the worst fires in the state will continue burning and requiring active firefighting “until winter rains fall,” the state’s expert cautioned.
Brown clarified that the state’s assertion that 500,000 people have had to evacuate was wildly inaccurate. The half million figure applies to people in households under any kind of evacuation order, including the mildest Level 1 rating. Fewer than 100,000 Oregonians have been told to evacuate their homes, she indicated.
Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry, said firefighting teams are still battling 16 “large” fires.
Cooler temperatures and more moisture in the air are helping them succeed, he said. He said the better weather is projected to continue for three days and improve even more early next week.
But Grafe said a cluster of fires including Beachie Creek stretch 56 miles from Warm Springs to Estacada with communities located in and near the fire zone. “We have not seen the likes of this fire ... in our state ever before,” he said.
And he said Oregonians should expect eight of the state’s big fires, including those, to continue burning and require active fire fighting “until the winter rains fall.”
Fires in the McKenzie River Valley, Illinois Valley are among those that he expects will keep burning until October or later.
The loss to many families has been staggering, the governor said. “We know hundreds, perhaps thousands of Oregonians have lost their homes” to the fires, she said.
Brown said she spoke with President Donald Trump on Thursday evening, that he was responsive to her pleas for help and that he agreed to help send personnel from the National Guard from around the nation to help. “He promised us all of his support,” Brown said of Trump.
She and her team of fire experts are expected to update the public about how many acres have burned, any new information about injuries and fatalities, which fires are still surging and which are coming under control and more.
Grafe said help from around the nation has been “aggressive" and is already partly in place.
But he said that the “large majority” of the roughly 3,000 firefighters battling fires around the state are from Oregon.
“We pull overhead fire management from all over the nation,” including New Mexico, Colorado and Florida, and they are leading incident command centers at Oregon fires already, he said. He said people and equipment will be arriving from Canada as well.
Adjutant General Michael Stencel, who heads the Oregon National Guard, said National Guard personnel will be sent to Clackamas and Klamath counties and other locations.
Brown said people who are not under any level of evacuation order, including those in Multnomah County, should stay in their homes and out of the way of people who need to evacuate. Grafe said those in Level 1 evacuation zones should prepare but also should keep living in their homes, not evacuate.
The mayor of Estacada, which was put under a Level 3 “Go Now” evacuation order Thursday afternoon, captured the state mood in his comment to The Oregonian/OregonLive: “I never thought I would see this day as a mayor of my city, but it’s here and my people are frightened,” Sean Drinkwine said.
Air quality in Oregon rates as worst in the world at of mid-day Friday.
The governor is slated to be joined at her virutal press conference by Mariana Ruiz-Temple, chief deputy state fire marshal. Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management also spoke.
-- The Oregonian/OregonLive politics team; @OregonianPol
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown spoke at a virtual press briefing Wednesday to deliver an update on wildfires burning around the state.