B Y J E S LY N L E M K E
FIREFIGHTERS DEPLOY
TO FIGHT THE JONES
F I R E N E A R LO W E L L ,
AMID A SMOKY HAZE
PHOTO COURTESY INCIWEB
FIRE LINES
Firefighters travel far to battle flames
close to Eugene
irefighter Mike Simon III has slept in a tent on the
beach of the Dexter Reservoir in Lowell since Aug.
16. His exhausted brother, nephew and cousins also
sleep in nearby tents each night.
These family members are with a 20-member
crew of Alaskan Natives who took three rural plane flights
to travel from their tiny fishing village of Hooper Bay,
Alaska, to Eugene to fight the Jones Fire, which is burning
about 10 miles outside Lowell in the Willamette National
Forest.
Lowell is about 20 miles from Eugene-Springfield, so
the smoke from this 5,000-acre plus wildfire has made its
way to the city.
More than 600 firefighters like Simon are sleeping on
the shores of the reservoir, waking at 5 am every morning
to start a 12- to 14-hour shift. Lowell’s Lundy Elementary
School and the reservoir’s marina on are completely oc-
cupied by fire staff, managed by the Oregon Department
of Forestry (ODF).
Each morning the town’s main grocery store, Bridge
Town Market, is crowded by fire vehicles and fire staff
buying gas and last-minute snacks before they head to the
fire lines. This town of 1,000 has warmly welcomed the
massive influx of firefighters with food donations, letters of
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support and a lot of waving as crews head out to the forest,
incident commander Mike Ciraulo says.
On Aug. 17, Simon, his cousin Leonard Bell and the
rest of the crew were working to quickly wrap an entire
outbuilding with foil at the Clark Creek Campground, in
the expected path of the Jones Fire. The metal layer pro-
tects the wood building from catching fire should embers
fall on the wooden roof.
“We’ve got duct tape, staples, ladders, some foil and
we’re pretty much wrapping the house layer by layer to
make sure the wind doesn’t blow it … I know the roof is
sort of thin. We are trying our best to not go through the
roof so we sent our lightest guy onto the roof to help us,”
Simon says.
A soft-spoken Alaskan who works as a part-time electri-
cian back in Hooper Bay, Simon says he’s fought more than
80 fires in Washington, Idaho and California alongside his
brothers and cousins. He’ll bring home about $3,000 to his
wife and children for his two weeks of work on the Jones
Fire. His crew typically fights two to four fires per summer.
More than 50 locals from Lowell and Fall Creek crowd-
ed into the tiny Lowell Fire Hall on Aug. 17 to hear a news
briefing from the ODF and staff of Willamette National For-
est. Their skies have been smoky and polluted for days now.
Residents wanted to know about the danger of the fire
reaching the town. They were told there was little risk;
Lowell is 10 miles from fire lines. They asked when the
fire staff would open up Forest Service Road 18 and were
told it would not be until late September.
And they wanted to know whether ODF personnel
would be out of the town’s elementary school building by
the time the school year starts. The answer to that was yes.
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“We turned around 30 people who came into fire camp
already today,” Marcus Kauffman, ODF public relations
officer, told EW. “We turned around probably 50 people at
the roadblock on the Forest Service Road 18 [Fall Creek
Road]. Most of those people are pretty understanding.
We changed their plans and they can’t go to their favorite
swimming hole.” The fire jumped the road on Aug. 20.
Kauffman added that the Jones Fire is mainly burning
south, toward Fall Creek Road and the Fall Creek Reservoir.
“There’s a trail, a creek and a road. That’s pretty solid
[as a containment barrier for the fire]. But it’s burning to
the south,” Kauffman says.
Tara Jones’s house is a mere six miles from the edge of
the Jones Fire. She and her partner, Bert Rekker, came to
the town hall in Lowell to see if and when they would need
to evacuate. Jones’s house is on the banks of the Fall Creek
Reservoir. Smoky wind blows in every night off the lake.
“We have to sleep with the windows closed. In the
morning, it’s smoky; then it starts to dissipate. You can
smell it and taste it,” Jones says.
Jones and her partner, their dog and a goat will all evac-
uate their six acres of land should the fire reach Fall Creek
Reservoir.
As of Aug. 23, the Jones Fire is one of three major wild-
fires burning in the Willamette National Forest, including
the Whitewater Fire near Mount Jefferson (8,500 acres)
and the Rebel Fire (2,691 acres).
Several other small fires are burning as well. The Milli Fire
in the Deschutes National Forest (12,457 acres) is burning
west of Sisters, and in southern Oregon the Chetco Bar Fire in
the Kalmiopsis Wilderness has burned almost 100,000 acres.
For more updates visit inciweb.nwcg.gov.