With the Cedar Creek Fire now burning over 90,000 acres, and containment back to zero percent, a team coordinating firefighting efforts hosted a virtual community meeting Monday night.
Officials from Northwest Team Six and the Lane County Sheriff’s office emphasized the choice to evacuate Oakridge was not taken lightly, and they were grateful to have had some warning about the east wind event.
Incident commander Corey Robinson was asked how close the fire came to Oakridge, after its start 15 miles away. He said, “So on the map you can see Oakridge is here, and I guess the scale is here. So five miles, depending on where specifically folks are talking. And High Prairie into the threes, so somewhere three to five.”
Robinson said the Huckleberry Flats area has not been affected. He said two old-growth forest features are still obscured by smoke, and people will have to wait to see if the protections in Goddard’s Grove and Constitution Grove held.
The incident meteorologist said the weather should be cooler with more humidity for the next seven to 10 days, good news for those who were evacuated, and for fire fighting efforts.
At the meeting, there were also questions about whether firefighters were using water from Waldo lake to fight the Cedar Creek Fire. Robinson said, “We are just so afraid of the contamination that comes out of the aviation buckets that go from pond to pond, lake to lake. The other reality part of it is, there’s plenty of other opportunities for water, so there was never a shortage of water on this fire. So there was plenty of water available, and we didn’t need to take the chance of impacting the purity of Waldo Lake.”
Robinson said there’s been no impact to Islet Campground. Asked about North Waldo Campground, he said it was favorable when the team left a week ago, but that another group has taken over that portion of the fire. Tuesday night, representatives from Alaska Team 1, who are in charge of the eastern area of the fire, will hold a second virtual meeting.
