Central Oregon wildfire season off to busy start

If it seems like June has been especially fiery around Central Oregon, that’s because it has been. The month’s not even over yet, and it’s already on record as having the most wildfire starts in three years.

Most of the fires across the region have been caused by lightning strikes, but a handful were human-caused.

According to the Deschutes National Forest, June 2016 brought 64 fires and more than 8,000 acres burned, while June 2017 had 82 fires and more than 16,000 acres burned. So far, June of this year has already had 151 fires and more than 123,000 acres burned in the region.

Deputy Fire Staff Officer Doug Johnson said the increase in wildfires is largely due to the environmental conditions.

“We do have drier fuel conditions right now than we’ve had in the past. Some of our indices are showing that a lot of our fine fuel, the available fuels, are probably about two weeks ahead of we’ve seen the past years,” Johnson said Thursday.

This June has been determined to have a “high to extreme” fire risk, compared to the last two Junes, when risks were deemed “moderate to high.”

Most of the fires in Central Oregon this month have been grass fires, but because of the winter’s low snowpack, there is potential for more fires later this summer in the higher elevations.

“I would say that, with the start we’ve had here, we can expect the same or more severe season this year,” Johnson said.

NewsChannel 21 also spoke to a Dominick DellaSala, the chief scientist at the Geos Institute in Ashland. He said that, as carbon emissions continue to rise and the global temperature continues to increase, fire season won’t be slowing down any time soon. And even though our fire-adapted ecosystem is ready for it, humans are not.

“This is not an ecological catastrophe. It’s more of a catastrophe for people, because no one likes smoke and no one likes the risk of fires,” DellaSala said. “So we’ve got to take the precautionary steps, because nature’s going to do what it’s going to do.”

Along with reducing carbon emissions and deforestation, DellaSalla said he hopes to see more people create defensible space around their homes and build with fire-resistant materials.

“So from the 1980s, that’s when we really started to see a recent uptick in acres burning,” he said. “So looking ahead, as we continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deforestation and fossil fuel use, that trend is likely to continue.”

The U.S. Forest Service asks with the Fourth of July holiday approaching that people be especially careful with fireworks and be aware that fireworks are illegal on national forest lands.