As of this morning, the Cedar Creek Fire is at 120,926 acres and is 36% contained. KLCC’s Brian Bull visited with some fire crew members Tuesday, and has this report.
On a stretch of road in a heavily burned area, an immense chipper with claw arm grabbed and pulverized clumps of charred brush. Crews have been busy not only fighting the fire since August, but also clearing away downed trees and foliage.
There’s about 800 crew members fighting the Cedar Creek Fire, down from 1200 a few weeks ago. That's when overall conditions were hotter and the containment level reset to zero after an east wind event caused the fire to spread rapidly. The event caused the temporary evacuations of nearby Oakridge and Westfir, sending an estimated 3,000 people to Eugene.
Jeremy Johnson, who’s with the incident response team at Division X, said another east wind event happened a couple days ago.
“But we were able to hold the line and now we’re just working to secure any additional hot spots that might have popped up. We’re doing really well on the west flank, I don’t really have many major concerns going in. We do still have uncontrolled fire line out there, and we are just working on the final phase of securing as far as the west flank goes.”
Johnson added that typically they’ve seen distinctively damp and cold weather by this time, signaling an end to the wildfire season.
“It has not been forecast that I’ve seen yet, but you know how weather goes, it changes kinda daily.”
Since starting August 1st, the Cedar Creek Fire has challenged crews working to contain it.
Eric Hendrickson, a public information officer for the fire, said it’s important to know that containment percentages aren’t the whole measure of how well firefighting efforts are going.
“Just because there may be a long time where the percent containment is kinda stalled, that doesn’t mean that they’re not doing anything,” said Hendrickson. “There’s just a lot of operations that take a lot of time to complete, to increase those numbers. Y’know, if we can get some precipitation, a wetting rain, that’s gonna really wet these fuels, and allow that to go out.”
Steep terrain, east wind activity, and lingering summer-like weather are also factors challenging crews at the Cedar Creek Fire.
Poor visibility kept aerial operations stalled Tuesday, but an official for the fire seemed confident daily flights for reconnaissance and water drops would resume once conditions improved.
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