USA hasn't seen a wildfire season like this
Pastor Dale Morgan
USA hasn't seen a wildfire season like this*
Updated 8/26/2006 10:08 AM ET
By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY
Hundreds of thousands of acres, mostly in the West, continued to burn
friday in the nation's most intense wildfire season in years, federal
fire officials said.
Washington, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon were seeing the worst of the fires
Friday as nearly 800,000 acres burned in the four states, according to
the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
Unusually hot, dry and windy conditions have intensified this year's
season, said Russ Rivera, fire information officer for the center. Last
year's less intense season also left combustible material such as twigs
and dead leaves around to burn, he said.
"When you have the exclusion of fire in some of these fire-dependent
areas, then you're likely to have a more intense season the next year,"
he said.
Forty-three new fires started Tuesday and Wednesday in the area of
Burns, Ore. Officials were especially concerned by four fires burning
25,000 acres, said Jeree Mills, spokeswoman for the Northwest
Interagency Coordination Center in Portland, Ore.
Those fires threatened ranches and a main power distribution line, and
45-foot flames prompted officials to close Highway 205 several times,
she said.
In Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California, almost 25,000
acres burned, threatening three historic structures in the gold-rush
mining town of Old Denny, said Martin Esparza, information officer for
California Interagency Incident Management Team 5.
Firefighters created lines of fire in a procedure known as "burnout" to
redirect flames away from communities and combustible materials, he said.
In southwest Washington, Dayton General Hospital temporarily relocated
35 nursing home residents to an unused farm labor camp Tuesday night
when fires came within 50 yards of the facility.
"It was very smoky," said John Burns, hospital chief operating officer.
"By the time we were moving people out, we had them covered in wet rags
and wearing masks."
Hills and hot weather hampered firefighting, said Clark Posey, the
Columbia County, Wash., fire marshal. "The weather is not cooperating
with us at all, and the terrain is not making it any easier," he said.
"You can't get trucks through some of these areas."
A handful of firefighters have suffered minor injuries from fighting the
blazes, and a few homes have burned, but no deaths have been reported in
this most recent round of wildfires.
The West is seeing the worst of the fires, but people across the country
are at risk, said Rivera of the fire center.
People can protect themselves by cleaning dead materials from their
properties, planting flowers and other moist foliage and removing
woodpiles from porches, he said.