Turns out, it’s just as important after a fire. We talk a lot about mitigation to control fuel before a fire. “If we can eliminate those and keep our communities safe, we’re going to have a good fire season,” Kern said. ![]() We fully anticipate this to happen more,” Kern said “We’re more concerned about those human-caused starts.”Īccording to the Forest Service, humans are at fault for more than 150 fires every year in central Oregon. “It’s a very natural process that this would happen. “You know it is important for us and the safety of our community to make sure that we balance leaving those natural snags and those fire impacted trees but also to make sure we’re not putting our communities and our folks at risk,” Ayotte said. However, mitigation is used to keep landscapes resilient, despite the number of human caused fires that are so damaging here. “Animals probably live better in a wildfire adapted ecosystem than as we do as humans,” Ayotte said “So in a lot of cases, wildfire is a necessary natural process that creates habitats.” ![]() RELATED: Free Central Oregon program inspects outside your home for fire risk factorsīut not every snag, or burned tree, should be taken out of the forest. “At that point, the tree is then processed into log form and those logs are then decked and then loaded onto a log truck which is ultimately delivered to a local mill in the Pacific Northwest,” Benedict said. For the Forest Service, it means the private company with the highest bid takes the burnt wood as sellable lumber. “After a fire, making sure that you’re mitigating not necessarily the impacts of the fire on the landscape but the impacts on the land while the fire was being fought and put out,” said Rika Ayotte, the Deschutes Land Trust Executive Director.įor the Deschutes Land Trust, that means managing trees on their own without letting natural fires thin down forests. RELATED: Fire that closed Highway 26 between Madras and Warm Springs contained “Forest Service came in and evaluated all the trees for failure or potential to fail onto the road and survivability,” said Christian Benedict, a Forest Service representative. And burned trees can topple onto roads and potentially hurt passersby. “But this is what our ecosystem has evolved with,” said Kassidy Kern, the Public Affairs Officer for the Ochoco National Forest and Crooked River National Grassland.Īn evolved ecosystem that’s used to the occasional fire, but that humans still aren’t. The result? All of those burned acres, especially those by the road, heighten the possibility of burned trees falling and causing harm. ![]() some privately owned lands under the protection of the Oregon Department of Forestry and some Deschutes Land Trust managed lands. It burned mostly on the Crooked River National Grassland. The Grandview Fire, which began on July 11, 2021, burned more than 6,000 acres. The first six months of 2021 have already brought $8 billion worth of weather disasters-including four severe storms, two flooding events, one winter storm with a deep freeze and one heat wave-influenced drought-according to experts from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.As fire season bears down on the High Desert, many people think about the immediate damage but not the clean-up that follows. It is the highest number of wildfires seen in over a decade, according to data from NIFC. This year's wildfires have already surpassed last year's figures over the same year-to-date period. Hundreds of firefighters, as well as aircraft, are currently fighting blazes in California as dozens of homes have been destroyed. Incident Management Teams are supporting 19 incidents and are preparing for another day of extreme temperatures in several western states," the agency said on Sunday. "More than 11,300 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to incidents. About 55 large fires have burned 768,307 acres thus far. and is burning in the Crooked River National Grassland and private land, southwest of. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency due to high temperatures and the threat of wildfires across the state.Īccording to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), wildfire activity is ongoing in 12 states as of Sunday, July 11. According to Central Oregon Fire Info, the Grandview Fire was estimated to be 300 acres as of 5:30 p.m.
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