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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Fighting wildland fires in Oregon has never been easy. The vast wilderness and rangeland, and incredibly different elevations and topographies, have always made it tough. But at least in previous decades, it was predictable: summer heat and dry vegetation, coupled with lightning strikes and sometimes careless humans, meant a few months of active firefighting. Now, fire is a 12-month phenomenon, fueled by a warming climate and increasingly dry fuels. We hardly have wildfires anymore; we have wildfire complexes that grow massive at an almost unbelievable rate of speed. Today on the show, you'll hear from one of the key figures in Oregon's firefighting structure and learn how his agency has had to develop and deploy new strategies to keep up with Oregon's new normal of near-constant fire. Kyle Williams is deputy director for fire operations at the Oregon Department of Forestry. Mr. Williams, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Kyle Williams: Yeah, you bet. Really appreciate the invite.
Dunne: Maybe start with this: Give the audience an overview of how we've traditionally fought wildfires in our state, maybe 10 or 20 years ago, because I do want to get into the differences we're seeing now. What was the traditional way to attack a wildfire?
Williams: Well, it all starts at the local level. Our agency, the Department of Forestry, is spread out. We protect about 16.2 million acres around the state, and I think the first piece of context people could use is that multiple agencies across the state are responsible for wildland fire. It starts where you'd expect: The Forest Service has about 16 million acres of forestland that it manages and protects, and we protect primarily private land throughout the state. The chunk of state-owned land is actually relatively small in our portfolio; it's largely private land, timberland, and land in people's backyards. Then you've got local fire service, which partners with us on what we call initial attack fires, the small ones we're built to catch quickly. At that local level, you'd get a phone call: There's a fire out on such-and-such road. We'd send our local resources, a couple of engines, maybe a helicopter, and a couple of our partners would show up, and we'd largely be successful. Our key performance measure as an agency is a target of putting out 98% of wildfires that occur in our jurisdiction at 10 acres or less. That speaks to a model built around rapid response: identify where the fire is, get there quickly, put it out small, and save a lot of money and damage. That's how the whole system was built, frankly, for about 100 years.
Dunne: And of course, we live in a very diverse state, a very diverse environment. Under that same strategy, talk about fighting a fire in eastern Oregon grasslands versus a dense forest like the Coast Range.
Williams: There you go. We protect from Astoria to Medford, out to Wallowa, Prineville, everywhere in between, and those are very different fuel types and fire behaviors. To address that, we're split into districts around the state, and each district has a slightly different mix of resources. You might be heavier on engines in one part of the state where you've got good road access and maybe heavier fuels, and then we've got a helitack crew out of our John Day office, which reflects a very remote area with not many roads: You've got to get there by air and deploy firefighters as fast as you can in those grassier environments. We try to do that through a mix of resources, and then we add statewide severity assets. We contract with aviation vendors to provide additional helicopters and single-engine air tankers, and we're getting into the business of having them provide additional short-term hand crews and engines we can bring to bear and move around the state based on where the fire risk is highest. You mix and match your resources to the fuel type and how likely those fires are to get big and become resource-intensive.
Dunne: OK, so we've described how the system was built over time. But things are changing. How is it different today to attack a fire anywhere in our state?
Williams: Well, yeah, we've certainly seen a more challenging environment over the last decade-plus. I use 2012 as the inflection point, when things started to feel different. That summer we had the Douglas Complex. A lightning storm came through, we're used to lightning, tracked up I-5, and put down more starts than we could address at the initial attack phase with our local resources, and it turned into a 50,000-acre complex. We thought, whoa, something's different. Then we stacked year after year of bigger, more challenging fire seasons. By 2024, it was the same recipe: overwhelming lightning initial attack and some significant human-caused fire starts that took off in heavy wind and bad conditions and overwhelmed our ability to keep up. We burned almost 1.9 million acres, and we thought, wow, that's the high bar, we'll have a couple of years to catch our breath. But 2026 has already surpassed it. What's happening is a combination of factors: We know about the snow drought from this winter setting us up for severe fire danger heading into summer, and then when you add the lightning events we've had this summer, it's more fire than our two-engine model can normally catch. Just yesterday, there was a fire down in the Klamath area. It started in a heavy timber area on some Forest Service land and was already at 100 acres by the time initial attack resources responded. We're just not getting the opportunity to be successful at initial attack, which is how all these agencies are built. So fires turn into multiday, thousand-acre incidents, and out in that eastern Oregon grass component with lighter fuels, they can hit 100,000 acres in a day or two. The resources required, the number of people and the span of control and scale you're trying to cover, has been way more than what we were dealing with 20 years ago.
Dunne: A couple of quick questions. When does a fire become a complex? What does that mean to the average person?
Williams: Good parsing of terms. A complex is a reference we use for multiple fires that are in the same general vicinity and managed under one organization. At the local level, a lightning bust comes through and you've got 10 fires that start; you might call that the July 12 Complex, meaning that district is managing that group. This summer, people have heard about the Rowe Creek Complex, which reflects multiple fires that all started in or near the same general area and burned together. Instead of having a list of a dozen fire names, you put them all under that complex and manage them under one organization, one financial tracking system, one ordering system. It simplifies operations and creates efficiency. It's kind of like putting a bunch of eggs into one basket.
Dunne: I think most people, when we hear about wildfires in news reports, have a sense of scale, since we often report on how many acres are burning. But I wanted to talk about another aspect you raised: speed. You mentioned the strategy is rapid deployment. Is speed something the average person needs to understand, how detrimental and devastating fire speed can be?
Williams: Yeah, it's the great equalizer. We've gotten significantly faster at detection and deployment over the last couple of decades: We've built out our camera detection network and invested in aircraft technology that helps us identify a fire when it's small. But especially this summer, by the time you get there, it's already grown. Typically, you'd send your first two engines out the door, they'd get there, the fire is a half-acre, and you can start putting water on it and digging a line around it, and you're good. But this summer, by the time crews arrive, it's 100 acres with a 15 mph wind on it, up and over the ridge and into heavier fuel, and you're already scrambling to order more resources to catch up to it. That's been the pattern over and over this summer. In many instances, not only is the fire already big by the time you arrive, there's a dozen of them, and you've only got enough resources to get to five or six. That's been the difference-maker the last few years for us.
Dunne: With these fires getting bigger and faster, talk about safety for the people fighting them. I imagine that's become an even bigger concern than 20 or 30 years ago.
Williams: That's absolutely a huge component. Our mantra at the Department of Forestry is to fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first. With that as the main priority, when we're deploying to an incident that's already at 100 acres with wind pushing it up and over a hill, you've really got to pay attention to line management: Are there adequate people to keep firefighters safe and make decisions about the next step, and still be safe? That's really been the pinch point again this summer. There's so much fire spread across the state that every agency is experiencing a bottleneck in line supervision. Those are our single resource bosses, who keep track of, say, a hand crew or an engine or a dozer and make sure they're integrated into the larger firefight safely. Above them are task force leaders, who supervise five to seven of those resources on a piece of line, and then a division supervisor oversees about five task force leaders. It's built similarly to a military operation. When you don't have enough single resource bosses, task force leaders and division supervisors spread across a fire with 55 miles of perimeter to make sure people can safely engage, you're really hamstrung in your ability to keep up with that fire as it marches across the landscape.
Dunne: It's easy, and I'm here in downtown Eugene, when we report on wildfires, especially in summer, to think of them as out there somewhere, far away, especially in the more wilderness areas. But I wanted to talk, especially as the wildfire environment is changing, about incursions and danger at the rural-urban interface, which Lane County, where I'm talking to you from, has a lot of.
Williams: That's a really important piece of this puzzle for us. As I mentioned, with the multiple agencies that protect wildland across the state, it's easy to think that a fire is way up on the mountain, on the Cascade crest, and that's a challenge. But for ODF, we typically operate in an environment where the top of the mountain is generally federal jurisdiction, the bottom of the valley is local fire service, and everything in between is some form of private land that ODF protects. When you think about the fires ODF has managed this summer, take East Evans Creek and the threat to Shady Cove and Medford and the surrounding communities: that was a huge part of that firefight. There was frankly nowhere left for us to fit that fire, so it becomes very resource-intensive. We have to order a lot to fight fire in that environment. We partner closely with the Oregon State Fire Marshal's Office, which has access through its incident management teams to additional local fire service specifically trained and professional in fighting fire around homes, so we partner with them. But it's incredibly resource-intensive. Look at the Aqua fire and its threat to Sisters: as it bore down from the south, stopping it where it did, and the Brewer Fire out there north of Prineville, show what it takes to fight fire in, on and around structures. That's driving a lot of our ordering, resource engagement and prioritization. In that urban interface environment, there is no margin for error, so it's forcing us to deploy a lot of resources and intensive effort in those places. And to your point, that's the Eugene urban interface environment: When you don't have much margin for error with a fire, it's incumbent on every element of the system to be really good at what it's doing. That's us on the wildland side, that's the fire marshal's teams in the backyard fighting that fire, and frankly, it's the landowners, before the fire even starts, creating defensible space in the offseason so that home will survive. There aren't enough firefighters to be at every backyard and on every porch for every fire pushing into an interface environment, so homeowners need to be engaged in this as well.
Dunne: I've heard from military leaders that wars are won, or rather run, before they're ever fought, because of the planning and strategy involved. When you all have downtime after the fire season, take us through how the strategy has shifted, changed and evolved to meet this more intense challenge.
Williams: Well, there's another good difference from 20 years ago: I'm not sure there is an offseason anymore in terms of the agency's work and planning. Frankly, we've had a fire going all 12 months of the year. Immediately after a fire season, we'll conduct after-action reviews. Did all the things we tried this summer work? Can they be better? What improvements do we need to make? What processes do we need to tighten up? Every fire season, we go through that process of continuous improvement. In the fall, you move into winter and shift your mindset to preparation for the next fire season, making sure all our cache supplies are purchased and put back on the shelf. You start the training process. We never stop training people around here, because, as I mentioned, that bottleneck in middle management takes a lot of different functions to be successful when fire is out on the landscape. All winter long we train. In my position, it's legislative engagement: We've got another long session coming up in January and February, and the agency will be engaged in conversations at the Capitol through the end of June. That's budget preparation, future investment, policy work. Then you're right back in June, and we kick things off with the governor's wildfire briefing in May, and the next fire season is already here. There's a lot of preparation. Like any military or sports example, it's never about just showing up to the game. All the work is in the preparation for it.
Dunne: And to that point about the Legislature, is there more we as a state need to do to give people like yourself the resources you need, but also, I don't know, a more inclusive structure, so that, like you said, it starts at the homeowner level? Maybe as a state we need to be thinking differently about wildfire than we got used to, as you said, just 20 years ago.
Williams: So yes, 10 years ago, I would have said everything you just said is 100% correct: We need to be thinking about this more, we need to be doing more. And then we actually started to make real progress. It started in 2019 with a governor's wildfire council, a group of people across many different areas of impact from fire who got together and started to chart what a future Oregon looks like to address what we think might be in front of us. Fast forward seven years, and there have been significant milestones in improvement and adaptation in how Oregon responds to wildfires. Look at House Bill 3940 from last session, which for the first time committed a dedicated funding source for mitigation work: creating a more resilient landscape that's ready to receive fire and not have it be so catastrophic, and dedicated funding for preparing our communities and built environment for inevitable wildfire. Before last year, we had never had consistent, dedicated funding to address what we call the other two legs of the cohesive wildfire strategy: the idea that investment can't just happen in response when a fire occurs, it also has to go toward getting ready for it. Those three legs are creating resilient landscapes, prepared communities and defensible space, and an adequate and prepared response function. The last six years, the Legislature has spent more time talking and thinking about that from both a policy and investment perspective. Are we done? Absolutely not. I'd say we're just starting. It took 100 years, honestly, maybe more, to get to where we are from a fuel and environment perspective, and it's going to take a couple of decades of really focused, intentional work to get to a point where, when fire happens in this state, it doesn't have catastrophic consequences.
Dunne: He is Kyle Williams, deputy director of fire operations at the Oregon Department of Forestry. Kyle, best of luck to you and your team, and thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Williams: Yeah, appreciate it, Michael.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we check in with Sen. Ron Wyden and get his take on all things happening in Washington, as well as back home in Oregon, including his investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and the banks, and his opinion on what's happening with former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record. Thanks for listening.
