Florence, Sour Biscuit Fires Merge in SW Oregon

KGW TV/AP ^ | 08 August 2002 | KGW and AP Staff

[madfly]

MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/763669.asp?0st=N11

Oregon fires merge into inferno

Crews in southwest Oregon have been lighting "burnout" fires like this one, near the town of O'Brien, in a bid to rob a massive wildfire of new fuel.(picture at URL)

Aug. 8 -- U.S. Forest Service workers often toil well after a wildfire to prevent later flooding and mudslides. NBC's Roger O'Neil reports.

Thousands of firefighters also battle major blaze in California

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Aug. 8 — Two prolonged Oregon wildfires merged overnight to create a 300,000-acre inferno as nearly 5,200 firefighters put up defensive lines, the National Interagency Fire Center reported Thursday. In Southern California, meanwhile, 3,100 firefighters were trying to protect property from a fire that’s destroyed 27 homes and forced 1,000 residents to flee. Together, the two hotspots are absorbing three-quarters of the entire firefighting force across the West.

THE OREGON fire, burning inside the Siskiyou National Forest, was only 15 percent contained Thursday morning, as crews built fire lines on three flanks. A “red flag” warning was posted Thursday in the area, alerting crews to expect gusty northeast winds and low humidity — natural ingredients for fanning the fire.

The Illinois Valley’s 17,000 residents remained under an evacuation advisory, and some 220 homes in the Rogue River area were also warned of advancing flames. The communities of Cave Junction, Kerby, Selma, Agness and Gardner Ranch, as well as the McCaleb Ranch Boy Scout Camp, were described as threatened. Firefighters and sheriff’s deputies have been going door-to-door advising people to be ready to leave

. The fires, the southern flank of which has spread into northern California, have been burning since July 13.

SAN DIEGO-AREA FIRE GROWS

In Southern California, several hundred more firefighters joined a fire line 60 miles northeast of San Diego. The blaze, which had grown to nearly 54,000 acres by Thursday, has forced 1,000 residents from several towns to flee and destroyed 27 homes. Eight of those were lost over the last 24 hours. Ninety-five other structures have been destroyed as well.

Some 3,100 firefighters are now battling the blaze, which was 60 percent contained.

Officials hope to have it under control by Sunday.

“As it heads toward the desert, the fuel becomes pretty sparse,” said Abby O’Leary, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry. “In the foothills, there’s still quite a bit of plants, but as it starts moving northeast ... it possibly could burn itself out.”

Local wildfire coverage
• Springfield, Ore.: New towns in line of fire
• Portland, Ore.: Resort town told to prepare
• San Diego: More crews brought in
• Durango, Colo.: Chief of staff defends stance on aid

As a As a precaution, the rural town of Warner Springs, population 1,200, was partly evacuated, while 70 people were told to leave the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation. The 340 residents of Ranchita were evacuated earlier.

And in Borrego Springs, elderly residents who might suffer from smoky air were also urged to leave. The blaze started July 29 when a National Guard helicopter clipped a power line while looking for marijuana plants in the rugged, isolated area. A severe drought — the San Diego area has seen just three inches of rain this year, 30 percent of normal — has made conditions ripe for wildfires.

FIREFIGHTER DIES

The fire season also claimed another life. The National Interagency Fire Center reported Thursday that a South Dakota volunteer firefighter who sustained injuries in a fire there had passed away on Tuesday, bringing to 20 the number of firefighters killed this summer.

Nearly 4.8 million acres have burned in the United States so far this year, almost three times the number last year and more than double the average for the last decade.

[EBUCK]

Thanks for the ping GD, this is horrible. What the article doesn't say hawever, is how the fires merged. I thought they had pretty much taken the correct steps to prevent that from happening.

SW OREGON, stay safe!!!

EBUCK

[Black Agnes]

Not Agness! Guess i'll have to change my name to 'Blackened Agness'.

[madfly]

ping

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the Oregon, San Diego and other updates.

This thing is about to go nuclear with the hotter weather that is predicted for today and tomorrow and with some weather predictors saying hotter from now through the weekend.

[EBUCK]

passed away on Tuesday, bringing to 20 the number of firefighters killed this summer.

What was that saying...Oh yah.."An eye for an eye and an eco-viralist for a firefighter!"

EBUCK

[Black Agnes]

I guess the tree-sitters all headed back for town. What a shame...would have been interesting had they stayed!!!

[Grampa Dave]

The weather forecasts for the next few days and into the weekend with some forecasts are on the fire's side. The area will be warmer and hot in some parts.

Here is the link to the forecast for Brookings, Oregon. Brookings is right on the coast. Normal temps in August are in the mid to high 60's. 80's are considered to be a Banana Belt Day, which is usually caused by winds coming down from the Kalmiopsis Wilderness and heating up as the air molecules raced down hill. (Link to Brookings, Oregon Forecast)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Grampa Dave]

Big laugh. Just keep your Agnes name.

The original Agnes, Oregon was spelled Agnes. Then, somehow it became Agness through "Gooder Spelling/English".

[Grampa Dave]

It is very simple to why and how the two fires merged.

Go back to the map that I just reposted showing the fire and the Kamiopsis Wilderness Area, the green colored area between the two fires on 5 August.

Remember there are no roads in the Wilderness Area. There are no fire fighters, this is the dirty secret, the Floristry Circus PR Clowns are not telling the public. This is PC firefighting at its worse. The only place they can fight the fire is outside of the Wilderness Area, and that has been on the East side of the fire. There is no one on the west side fighting it.

Yesterday afternoon the weather warning that I posted two days ago started to happen. The areas east and west of the fire warmed up, and the humidity dropped. The winds changed. So the two fires merged over the green area shown in that map.

Now with the weather going the fire's way through this weekend, we could see it going nuclear if the right weather elements combine for the fire.

I think that those living north, south west and west of the fire are really in danger if this happens. Imagine the area from Smith River, California north throught Brookings/Harbor up to Gold Beach and over to Agness being in harm's way the next 3 to 5 days.

If that fire jumps the Rogue River, every community North of Gold Beach/Agness to the Bandon area is in peril. That whole area has been the target of the al Qaeda Tree huggers re limiting roads, no timber harvesting and no brush removal. It gets very dry in August/September.

People say that it can't jump the Rogue at Agness, are forgetting about the recent fire at the Dalles, Or. area that jumped the larger and wider Columbia river and set fire on the Washington side.

Last but not least, when fires get this big, they can create their own mini weather areas which will often make the fires bigger.

We could see the most massive Rural Cleansing of America so far by the Fire agenda/tactics of the al Qaeda Tree Huggers who hate those of us who live in the country.

[EBUCK]

I was sure that you had reported that they created a barrier thru that green area. I must have been mistaken.

This is going to be bad!!

EBUCK

[bray]

For all you City Slickers, 285,000 acres is 445 Square miles of pristine forests! The enviroqueda wont allow 10 acres of timber harvest???

The legal eco-terrorists are at it again. Not only do they destroy the forests by fighting timber sales throughout the west in front of sympathetic courts but also now they are putting the final nails into the forest and salmon habitat. The so-called friends of the forest have handcuffed the reclamation efforts of Montana that these once scorched forests will take generations if they ever recover. This is strictly by the work of the Sierra Club and other eco-terrorists.

Two years ago the treasured forests of Montana were on fire and over a million acres were burned thanks to poor forest management, a draught and a series of lighting storms. The tinderbox forests went up with a vengeance and burned the pristine virgin and second growth timber into a blackened wasteland. As most forest people know the current forest fires are so intense that they burn the ground white hot and sterilize that soil up to 18 inches into the ground. This means that nothing will grow in that ground for decades if ever. The old forests would naturally burn every few years and clear out the fallen branches and trees, but not anymore. The forest clutter accumulates not thanks to the lockout by the courts to proper management and control of the forests.

After those fires the forest products industry wanted to go in and harvest the billions of dollars worth of timber and reclaim ate the lands. This would have furnished jobs for the communities of Montana and improved the habitats of the forest creatures and endangered salmon spawning streams.

The legal eco-terrorists quickly moved in and stopped all forest sales and required multiple environmental impact studies. This not only stalled all clean up and harvesting of the dead and dying trees but halted all reclamation projects in these forests. The trees have since become unmarketable and the billions of dollars worth of timber have become nearly worthless. That apparently was not enough for the terrorists; they have stopped any replanting or forest improvements or erosion control. The Congress spent $8 million to reclamation the forests and prepare it for sale. Most of that money was wasted on impact studies to satisfy the ecos further stalling the salvage efforts.

Talking to a mill person in the Hamilton area he explained the boondoggle that the ecologists call reforestation. Now they have teams of people walking around these burned forests and shooting trees with paint guns. Hopefully, this does not hurt the poor dead trees. Behind the paint gun shooters is a team of .22 shooters. These guys find the trees with paint markings and shoot the pinecones out of the trees. They of course do not collect these cones like the pinecone harvesters and then send them to the tree nurseries to grow and then plant into healthy trees. No, that would make too much common sense. The legal eco-terrorists have forced the forest at your service to just let those cones drop on the rock hard ground and lay there waiting for a chipmunk to open it or open on its own, hopefully in a century or so.

There are two major problems with the paintball selection and .22 caliber method. First, as stated before the blast furnace temperatures of the fires leaving the ground about as fertile as a parking lot have sanitized the soil. Second, there are no animals in that sterile environment left to open the cones and scatter their seeds. And what do these cone hunters get for their valiant effort to waste the forests and taxpayers time? They are paid a measly $18/hr to spend a day in the forest shooting pinecones. When did the Forest Service and Govt become so fearful of the Sierra Club and their fellow eco-mafia? Are they so afraid of having their buildings burned down that they will be forced to make useless symbolic gestures at forest management that they will not actually manage those forests? Or are they afraid of the PC Gestapo to the level of fearing that not saving a dead tree is equivalent of killing a whale? The fact that these eco-gangsters can stop any actions in the nations forests no matter how positive proves how powerful and threatening they have become.

When will we take back our national treasures and manage them in a smart and healthy manner? The destruction of the Montana forests two years ago by mismanagement of these forests was bad enough. It does not compare to the continuation of a forest desert that is being maintained in the name of ecotopia. Oregon is burning from the same malpractice and we will be heading down the same destructive forest path that continues to scorch Montana!

Pray for GW and the Truth

[Granof8]

Good morning from the warm and sunny Southern Oregon Coast.

Check out this morning's map at http://www.nwtec.com/home/map020808.html

[Grampa Dave]

They can't go in and create a barrier in any wilderness area.

In 1964, the Rat Congress created the no roads, no heavy equipment and no nothing Wilderness Areas. Then, one of the worse presidents of our time the Big Socialist, LBJ, signed the bill and set the Wilderness Act of 1964 into action for the Green Jihadists.

So the dirty secret of the Floristry Circus, is that if a fire starts in one of these Wilderness Tinderboxes, there isn't a damn thing they can do about any fires in the wilderness areas. They can try to create fire control lanes around the wilderness areas and hope that works. This is what has been done here on the East Side of the fire.

Will those fire control lanes work? Only God knows.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is an interesting history on the Lucas Lodge on the other side of the Rogue River, just north of this huge fire.

The lodge was a great place to go for lunch while fishing up in that area in the fall, winter, spring or summer.

The jet boats would stop there for lunch and make their way back down river after lunch. One of the jet boat companies had a Friday and Saturday evening dinner run in the Summer time. You left Gold Beach in the late afternoon and went up river to the Lucas Lodge. There you had an incredible dinner served on their deck or outside. Many of the vegie were grown right there including some incredible sweet corn. Often the salmon was cooked in the old Indian way by staking it with cedar poles and putting the slab of salmon around a big cedar fire pit. The heat and smoke from the flame cooked/smoked the salmon. Food to kill for.

Here is the story from Oregon Live:

Lodge has seen 'hot' visitors before

08/08/02

WENDY OWEN

AGNESS -- Corlyss McCullough had just seen "Gone With the Wind" and there, in the dining room of her family's lodge, sat Clark Gable.



The handsome Hollywood actor, who played Rhett Butler in the movie, had stopped for lunch at Lucas Lodge in Agness after a trip up the Rogue River.

It was the 1940s, and McCullough was a teen-ager at the time. She and her sister wanted to talk to Gable, but their mother's warning not to bother famous visitors echoed in their heads.

"We couldn't oooh and ahhh over these people," McCullough said.

Minding their mother, they left Gable alone. No autograph, no photo -- only a pleasant memory from their childhoods.

Built in 1912, Lucas Pioneer Ranch and Lodge is the oldest established business on the Rogue River, said McCullough, 72, who now runs the lodge and restaurant with her children and grandchildren.

While the lodge is threatened by the approaching Florence fire across the Rogue River, McCullough said it will remain open until they're told to immediately evacuate. Tourists continued to call the lodge Wednesday, some to cancel reservations and others to make them.

Lodge visitors come from all over the world, McCullough said. A family from Spain planned to rent a car in San Francisco and drive to the remote town of 150 residents.

Word has spread with very little advertising.

"We don't even have a Web site," McCullough said, shrugging.

The lodge is tucked under a canopy of trees about 50 feet up a hill from the Rogue River. A row of small American flags lines the street to the lodge about a block from downtown Agness. Thirty wild turkeys wandered along an emergency airstrip next to the lodge, which McCullough's father built years ago. The runway crosses the road, but McCullough knows of only one minor car-plane collision.

In Clark Gable's day, the lodge was a hideaway for the rich and famous. But its remote location during World War II also made it attractive to the military. Several generals held secret meetings at a remote cabin far up the Rogue River, and frequently they ate at Lucas Lodge, McCullough said.

Her father would take the men by boat back and forth to the cabin, she said.

"We had a lot of very wealthy, powerful men in here, and they didn't want anyone to know where it was," McCullough said.

Back then, visitors to Agness came mostly for the fly-fishing. They caught salmon in the Rogue and steelhead in the nearby Illinois River, but the river users have changed over the years, McCullough said. Now, tourists riding jet boats from Gold Beach stop for lunch, and boaters floating down the Rogue River from Galice, near Grants Pass, stay the night.

She knows for sure that Ginger Rogers stayed the night. She also remembers seeing Barbara Stanwyck and Gabby Hayes, but she suspects others may have slipped through undetected.

"A lot of them come incognito," she said. "They want to have some time just to themselves."

---

Hopefully this wonderful place and the People of Agness will be spared from a potential Green Holocaust.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for this link to the latest map which was yesterday:

There is a whole lot of red showing.

How are you and the rest of Gold Beach doing? Is there a lot of smoke yet in the city?

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for your incredible look at the what the al Qaeda Tree Huggers have done in other forests, pre, during and post fires that they have set up with their green agendas.

Incredible that they paintball the dead trees so that florist service clowns can come along with 22 rifles to shoot down the pine cones, which must lay where they are found and not gathered.

It makes you hope that nature infects all of these al Qaeda with a deadly organism. Then, the doctors refuse to treat these Green Jihadists as that would not be as nature planned.

The blocking of the harvesting of dead trees has happened after most major fires. Their goal is not one single board foot of even dead timber to ever be harvested in what used to be our national forests.

These are mentally ill people in charge of our outdoor lives. They need to be rounded up, sedated for life and locked up so they can't harm us any more.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

Morning Grampa - just returned from the lake. Three decent bows & lost three; one very impressive.

Evidence this summer in Oregon shows a fire can jump up to two miles. The Rogue would be a hopscotch square if the winds are right.

The Tiller fire complex in the Umpqua area is the next one to watch.

[Granof8]

Update from 8:30 p.m., August 7, nothing yet today.
What’s New: The possibility of evacuation for Illinois Valley residents was reduced again today. Fire officials extended the alert status from 4-hour to 8-hour notice. This means that if county sheriff deputies notify residents that an evacuation has been issued, residents will have 8 hours in which to safely leave the area.

The Agness area also is under an evacuation advisory. The Curry County Sheriff on Tuesday notified residents in Agness, Illahe and Oak Flat that the 24-72 hour advisory was necessary because of predicted hot, dry weather over the next few days. No other evacuation notices or advisories are in effect for any other towns or communities, and none are planned in the immediate future.

Excellent progress continued along the Florence Fire’s east flank. Securing fire lines in areas on the north and southeast flanks is also proceeding as planned.

Warmer, drier weather predicted for the next few days is expected to increase the level of fire activity within the containment lines. A red flag warning is posted for tonight because of predicted strong east to northeast winds and poor humidity recovery. Crews going out on tonight’s shift were warned to watch for intense burning of large fuels, such as downed trees, and for fire running up trees and torching some of the crowns.

Also today, the Florence Fire and the Sour Biscuit Fire were administratively merged and the Sour Biscuit Fire name has been dropped. The entire area is now called the Florence Fire. Even though the two fires have not completely burned together, a common fire line connects both fires on their east flanks. The burnout operation along the east flank fire line, which may be completed in a day or two, will link the two fires.

The entire Florence Fire will be divided into four zones: Zone 1, managed by Lohrey’s Type 1 Team, covers from approximately the mid-point on the fire’s north flank to the point where the east flank meets the Oregon-California border; Zone 2, managed by Bennett’s Type 1 Team, covers the entire portion of the fire south of the Oregon-California border; Zone 3, managed by Martin’s Type 1 Team, covers most of the western flank north of the Oregon-California border; Zone 4, managed by Bright’s Type 2 Team, covers the extreme northwest corner of the fire. Zone 1 will be based in Cave Junction, Zone 2 in Crescent City, Calif., Zone 3 in Gold Beach, and Zone 4 in Agness.

Fire statistics beginning tomorrow will be reported as one set of data for the entire fire.

Total Florence Fire
Size: 243,836 acres Start: July 13, 2002 Cause: Lightning
Percent Contained: 15% Expected Containment: Unknown
Cost to date: $20.3 million Fire Line to Build: 141 miles
Personnel: 2,914 Injuries: 1
Resources: 60 crews (10 Type 1, 50 Type 2), 17 helicopters (8 Type 1, 4 Type 2, 5 Type 3), 108 engines, 45 dozers, 34 water tenders.
Location: 26 miles southwest of Grants Pass, Ore., on the Siskiyou National Forest within the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.
Structures Threatened: 3,400 residences, 250 commercial properties, 2,200 outbuildings/other
At Risk: Portions of the towns or communities of Cave Junction, Kerby, Selma, O’Brien and Agness; Gardner Ranch; private lands east of McCaleb Ranch; Late Successional Reserve and timber; threatened and endangered fish; Illinois and Rogue River Wild and Scenic River campgrounds.
Closures: Galice and Illinois Valley Ranger Districts on the Siskiyou National Forest west of State Highway 199 are closed to all public access due to extreme fire conditions; Bear Camp Road #2300 from Galice to Agness; hiking trail through Rogue River Wild and Scenic area.

Cooperating Agencies: USDA Forest Service, USDI Bureau of Indian Affairs, USDI National Park Service, USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, USDI Bureau of Land Management, Josephine County, Oregon Department of Forestry, Office of the Oregon State Fire Marshal, Oregon National Guard, City of Cave Junction, Coos Fire Protective Association, and private entities.

Total Sour Biscuit Fire – now part of the Florence Fire (8/6/02 pm data)
Size: 41,897 acres Start: 7/13/02 Cause: Lightning
Percent Contained: 25% Expected Containment: Unknown
Cost to date: $8.4 million Fire Line to Build: 35.5 miles
Personnel: 1,780
Location: 17 miles southwest of Cave Junction

Pacific Northwest National Incident Management Team 2
Mike Lohrey, Incident Commander