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Wednesday, November 28, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Sisters firefighters served in Paradise
By Jim Cornelius
Editor in Chief
Two Sisters firefighters
deployed earlier this month to
California as part of Oregon
strike teams mobilized to
support the battle against
the catastrophic Camp Fire,
which destroyed the town of
Paradise in central California.
Shift Commander Rob
Harrison and Firefighter
Matt Millar headed south on
November 9 and returned to
Sisters November 20. The
first days of their deployment,
they served in structure pro-
tection and fire suppression
details, and spent the rest of
their deployment patrolling
the area and identifying fire
safety issues that might pre-
vent people from returning to
the site of the fire.
There is not much to
return to in Paradise. The fire-
storm, driven by wind gusts
as high as 70 miles per hour,
destroyed most of the resi-
dences and much of the busi-
ness district of the mountain
community.
“The scope of it is mind-
boggling, for sure,” Harrison
told The Nugget. “Unlike any-
thing we’ve seen.”
While what the Sisters
firefighters saw in Paradise is
a sobering reminder of fire’s
destructive force, Millar noted
that there are some key differ-
ences that make such a catas-
trophe less likely to occur in
Sisters.
“While we’re certainly
exposed to that kind of thing,
we’ve got some things going
for us here that they didn’t
have in Paradise,” he said.
“We don’t have as prob-
lematic terrain as they do in
paradise.”
Steep and deep canyons
that cut through the area
affected both fire behavior
and people’s ability to evacu-
ate quickly, Millar said. The
winds that drove the fire are
fierce downslope winds —
essentially the same as what
Southern Californians call
Santa Ana winds. Canyons
channelize the winds — and
they channelized evacuation
efforts.
Harrison noted that man-
agement to protect the urban-
wildland interface has been
pretty substantial in Sisters
Country.
“In this area, they’ve done
a lot of work in the years since
I’ve been here,” he said.
Still, both firefight-
ers agreed that individual
initiative is important to pre-
pare for the inevitable blazes
that break out here every fire
season.
“There’s a lot of things you
can do as a homeowner well
in advance of the fire front,”
he said.
Residents are consistently
urged to create defensive
space around their homes and
to keep gutters and the areas
under decks and porches free
of debris that can host a spark
from embers thrown out by
wildfire.
The firefighters saw evi-
dence of the strange vaga-
ries of fire behavior. Millar
recalled seeing a house under
construction, nothing but
exposed lumber, that was
— inexplicably — the only
thing standing for a couple of
blocks. They saw instances
where a car was sitting melted
two feet from a house that had
survived — or a house burned
down next to a car that had
only light fire damage.
Harrison noted that a com-
mercial building constructed
entirely of metal collapsed —
because it simply got so hot
that the walls couldn’t hold up.
PHOTO PROVIDED
Two Sisters firefighters were deployed on the Camp Fire in Paradise,
California.
“There was a part of it to the catastrophic fires in
that seemed really, really ran- California. But he notes that
the impact of the blazes will
dom,” Millar said.
Thousands and thousands linger in people’s lives for
of people were displaced by many years to come — long
the fire. Yet, whatever the after the headlines have
divisiveness of the times, the faded.
“The people who really
firefighters saw people com-
need support right now are
ing together.
“The thing that I’ll never the people who lost their
forget is just the support we homes, lost their livelihoods
got from everyone we ran — they don’t have jobs to go
across in that community,” back to,” he said.
One means of support is
Harrison said. “It was over-
through contributions to the
whelming. It really was.”
Millar said that fire- North Valley Community
fighters deeply appreciate Foundation at https://www.
the support that they have nvcf.org/fund/camp-fire-
received in their deployment evacuation-relief-fund.
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