2A Wednesday, August 16, 2017 Appeal Tribune
are closed to the public
through eclipse day and
beyond.
The fire likely won’t be
extinguished until winter
rains arrive, fire officials
said.
“We understand how
disappointed people are,”
Willamette National For-
est Supervisor Tracy
Beck said.
Fire
Continued from Page 1A
blacken one of the most
beloved hiking and back-
packing spots in Oregon.
All totaled, 117,000-
acres and almost 30 miles
of the Pacific Crest Trail
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“We threw everything
we had at this fire when it
started. But you can’t get
them all.”
Smoldering tree
undetected
It’s fairly common for
lightning to ignite a wild-
fire long after the actual
strike.
When lightning storms
come through with rain,
some fires pop up imme-
diately while others smol-
der in what are known as
strike trees — trees hit by
lightning.
As the forest dries
from the storm, the spark
can remain for weeks and
even months before the
tree falls down, or a gust
of wind sweeps it into the
forest to catch fire.
In July of 2015, a
weeks-old lightning strike
ignited a fire along the
shoreline of Marion Lake,
also in the Jefferson Wil-
derness, on a blue-sky
day. The column of smoke
came as a shock to the
handful of swimmers at
the lake that day.
The same thing ap-
pears to have occurred
with the Whitewater Fire.
One of the lighting
strikes from the June 26
storm hit a tree near the
top of Sentinel Hills,
about 100 yards off White-
water Trail, a popular
pathway to Jefferson
Park.
Nobody was aware of
the strike tree or smolder-
ing spark, multiple Forest
Service officials said. The
agency does aerial patrols
after lightning storms,
but holdovers from previ-
ous strikes tend to pop up
without warning.
“We can’t check every
tree in the forest,” Beck
said.
In any case, the light-
ning-struck tree eventual-
ly fell into a pile of dry
brush and timber, igniting
flames and sending up a
smoke column spotted
July 23.
“As soon as it was spot-
ted, we hit it with every-
thing we had,” Beck said.
“We used heavy helicop-
ters, chainsaws, water
pumps and engaged the
fire directly. Our fire-
fighters did everything
they could to catch the
fire before it spread.”
Fighting wildfires in
wilderness areas is con-
troversial. The Forest
Service is charged with
maintaining the "wild
character" of the congres-
sionally designated areas,
and fires are a natural
part of the ecosystem.
Many fire experts also
believe decades of sup-
pressing forest fires has
made them more damag-
ing in the long-term.
"The Forest Service ac-
knowledges that putting
out today’s fire will likely
make tomorrow’s fire big-
ger, yet every day they
still try to put out damn
Council
Continued from Page 1A
www.edwardjones.com
Member SIPC
LOCAL ADVISORS
Salem Area
Vin Searles
Jeff Davis
Keizer Area
Surrounding Area
Sheryl Resner Bridgette Justis
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parking lots open to it, at
building owners’ discre-
tion.
The bans are designed
to cut down on scenarios
where pedestrians have
to walk through smoke
while shopping downtown
or recreating at parks –
and also to reduce the
number of cigarette butts
left behind by smokers.
Outside one downtown
bar, “the butts are all over
the place … I think it’d be
great to get rid of that,”
resident Barbara Spring-
er said at a council meet-
ing.
How enforceable a
smoking ban would be is a
question Silverton Police
Chief Jeff Fossholm was
asked by councilors to ad-
dress at future council
meetings or work ses-
sions.
The proposed bans on
plastic bags and Styro-
foam containers are
straightforward.
Busi-
nesses would no longer be
allowed to give customers
their purchases in either
product, both of which are
inexpensive but widely
known to resist decompo-
sition in landfills.
The idea of banning
them was brought to the
council by the Environ-
mental
Management
Committee, an eight-per-
son group. Councilor Da-
na Smith leads the com-
mittee with Silverton’s
public works director; a
representative from Sil-
PHOTO BY JEREMY MITCHELL
This photo of the Whitewater Fire burning in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness was taken before
Jefferson Park was closed to hikers and backpackers.
near every fire," said
George Nickas, executive
director of Wilderness
Watch. "We need to stop
seeing fire as something
to fight, especially in Wil-
derness, just as we don’t
see snowfall, rainfall, or
wind as something to
fight."
Grady McMahan, De-
troit district ranger, said
the agency decided to
fight the Whitewater Fire
because it was so early in
the year and had the po-
tential to grow beyond the
wilderness boundaries.
"Our goal was to put the
fire out while protecting
wilderness characteris-
tics and private land and
structures," he said. "It's a
difficult balancing act."
Blaze spills over a
cliff
By the evening of July
24, officials knew the fire
wouldn't go quietly.
High winds threw em-
bers half a mile, starting
spot fires in a forest that
was bone dry. The fire
grew from 50 to 80 acres,
crossing the Whitewater
Trail and threatening pop-
ular Jefferson Park,
where backpackers re-
mained.
But firefighters who
hiked 4 miles into the wil-
derness, amid boiling
temperatures, made pro-
gress on the fire. They
built hand lines and kept
the blaze limited to 80
acres by July 27.
“Hard work pays off,”
said a press release from
the fire. “The difficult,
dirty and dangerous work
by firefighters on the
Whitewater Fire is start-
ing to pay dividends.”
The problem was the
terrain.
Sentinel Hills, where
the fire started, sits atop
steep cliffs. Late that
week, winds kicked up
and the fire spilled down-
hill, with flaming trees
and boulders crashing
into
the
Whitewater
verton’s waste contractor,
Republic Services; and
five citizens, including a
high school student.
“It was a really good
process, sitting back and
evaluating where we
were as a city in regard to
environmental issues,”
Smith said.
Last year, the commit-
tee helped kick start a res-
idential food composting
program, and it’s now ex-
ploring an expanded pro-
gram with commercial
food waste, she said. It’s
also initiated a new part-
nership with Silverton
High School students,
some of whom already
test Silver Creek’s water
quality, to share data
about the pollution caused
by water runoff from city
streets.
As for plastic and Sty-
rofoam, some food estab-
lishments have requested
a transition period, during
which they can use up
their bags and boxes be-
fore switching to more en-
vironmentally friendly
products, Smith said.
Of the 1,108 households
that responded to the 2016
community survey, ma-
jorities favored taking ac-
tion on all four issues now
being considered by the
council. Support for bans
on smoking in parks and
on downtown sidewalks
came in at 73 and 70 per-
cent, respectively. Fifty-
nine percent said they’d
support a ban on retailers’
use of plastic bags, while
66 percent said they’d
support a ban on food-
grade Styrofoam at gro-
cery stores and restau-
rants.
Creek valley. The fire
roared down the cliffs and
then burned back up it.
Hot shot crews ana-
lyzed stopping the fire as
it spread downhill, but the
danger was too high.
“Once it spilled over
the cliff, there was really
no way of stopping it with-
out a high risk of injury or
death to the firefighters,”
Beck said.
Search and Rescue
teams were sent to evacu-
ate backpackers from
Jefferson Park as the fire
spread to 167 acres July
30.
"You could feel the heat
coming off the fire and
see ash all over the snow-
fields at Jefferson Park —
it looked like someone
took a pepper shaker onto
Mount Jefferson," said
Jeremy Mitchell, a volun-
teer search and rescue
team member. "We proba-
bly evacuated 25 people. I
was surprised how many
people were still there."
The next day, Jeffer-
son Park and all surround-
ing trails were officially
closed.
"That ended up being a
really good call," Mitchell
said.
Wind and heat fuel
flames
At the same time the
fire
was
spreading,
weather conditions went
from bad to catastrophic.
The fire stayed around
167 acres for two days be-
fore growing to around
297 acres.
Then it blew up.
Fueled by high winds
and temperatures in the
100s, the fire expanded
fivefold to 1,500 acres and
then to 4,579 acres by
Aug. 3.
Smoke and ash rained
down on nearby Detroit as
the fire spread within a
few miles of State High-
way 22.
“Record-setting heat,
rugged terrain and top of
the fire season — it
doesn’t get any worse,”
said Steve Zeil, fire be-
havior analyst for the in-
cident team during a
meeting in Detroit.
“All the ingredients for
extreme fire behavior
(were) present.”
Fire teams stopped en-
gaging the fire in the wil-
derness and instead fo-
cused on building contain-
ment lines on Forest Ser-
vice Roads outside the
wilderness.
As the fire spread be-
yond wilderness bound-
aries, the broad goal was
to stop the fire from
reaching highways, Mar-
ion Forks and the Breiten-
bush Community.
No evacuations were
ever ordered, and the fire
has remained 3 to 6 miles
from the small towns.
Going forward
The fire has slowed its
spread in recent days,
growing a limited amount
as weather conditions im-
proved.
Fire teams are now tak-
ing a more proactive ap-
proach, using controlled
fire on containment lines
to starve the blaze of the
fuel it would need to grow.
With rain in the fore-
cast, there's hope fire ac-
tivity will tamp down
enough to stop smoke
from obscuring the sky
during eclipse day.
Still, no matter how
much the fire improves,
Forest Service officials
aren't considering re-
opening Jefferson Park
for the big day.
"One little rainstorm
might slow it down, but it
will still be a large, active
fire that has behaved er-
ratically this entire time,"
McMahan said. "I couldn't
sleep at night knowing
there were a hundred or a
thousand people near a
fire that with one strong
gust of wind could turn
things sideways in a mo-
ment."
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