Fire managers talked weather, smoke, fire behavior, and strategy as it pertains to the Cedar Creek Fire during a community meeting Sunday.
Around 20 community members gathered at Oakridge High School while as many as 90 others joined in online to get an update from the team managing the fire. The lightning-caused fire began August 1 and as of Sunday had burned 124,447 acres and was at 45% containment.
Bob Tobin, Incident Meteorologist, explained how the high pressure that’s been sitting over the region has trapped the smoke in our atmosphere, creating the hazardous air quality conditions that have permeated the communities of Oakridge and Westfir. With a marine layer in the forecast for later this week, Tobin said, “We’re going to cool down 10 to 15 degrees the next couple days, relative humidity is going to come up, and we’re still going to be a little bit above normal, but we’re going to get, kind of a break.”
That favorable weather forecast should make conditions more conducive to keeping the fire in check. Fire Behavior Analyst Don Strand explained how the fire had a brief “pause” when some precipitation came to the area late in September causing a dampening effect. But then fire activity picked back up again with the return of unseasonably warm and dry weather.
Strand described the current fire situation as a mosaic within the fire’s perimeter, and those are the areas causing all the smoke. “There’s areas of burnt and unburnt fuel out there. And there’s still scattered heat throughout the fire area, and what it’s doing is slowly spreading into new fuels that have not burned, and continuing to burn,” said Strand. “Some of those big chunks are going to take quite a few days and weeks of rain to totally get to where it won’t want to burn. So we are going to be seeing smoke being produced, considerably less than what you saw earlier, but we are still going to have smoke in this area for quite a while as these fuels continue to consume the interior.”
Incident Commander Bobby Shindelar explained how, in addition to directly putting out the fire, crews are engaged in other work that comes along with having a fire cover such a large area. Shindelar said this includes repairing damage caused by firefighting efforts such as rehabbing dozer and hand lines, “opening road systems, trying to deal with the immediate hazard trees, and cleaning ditches so that when the water does come in it will flow properly through the culvert systems.”
Several areas on the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests are still closed to the public. Shindelar said the closure areas “could be shrinking” as soon as this week, but he noted that work will continue so many areas will remain off-limits. He noted that “There’s going to be work activities that are going to have to occur for a long period of time. It will occur through this whole next winter, all the way into next summer, and long-term for the forest.”
Respite from Hazardous Air Quality
For the week of October 9, Oakridge had five days where air particulate matter rose into the “Hazardous” range of the Air Quality Index, retreating slightly to the “Unhealthy” range Sunday. The lingering smoke and haze also triggered Air Quality Alerts for much of the Willamette Valley.
Last week, Lane County Public Health urged residents in those areas to be mindful of the long-term health impacts of continued exposure to poor air quality, and seek respite when possible.
LCPH Officer Dr. Lisandra Guzman said typically during periods of poor air quality the focus is on warning “the very young, the very old, and those with preexisting cardiovascular or pulmonary disease.” But, Guzman says in situations like what’s happening in the Oakridge area, “continued exposure to hazardous air can cause short and long-term health impacts for all community members.”
Free air purifiers have been made available to residents of Oakridge and Westfir through Oakridge Air. And to help Oakridge area residents seek respite from the hazardous air, LCPH has partnered with Oakridge Air and Willamalane to offer free all-access memberships to the Willamalane Park Swim Center, Bob Keefer Center, and Camp Putt which will be good through November.
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