3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2017
Oregon wildfi re fi ghting costs hit $340 million
Blazes burned
more than
678,000 acres
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Fighting Ore-
gon wildfi res this year so far
has cost state, federal, local,
tribal and private entities more
than $340 million and con-
sumed 678,000 acres, state
authorities said Monday.
All of that activity man-
ifested into smoke-fi lled air
and limited visibility for many
Oregonians.
The “sheer volume of fi res
all at the same time and con-
tinuous days of growth up
through Washington and
Idaho” created the oppressive
conditions, said Doug Grafe,
fi re protection division chief
at the Oregon Department of
Forestry.
More than 8,000 person-
nel from different agencies
have been deployed to fi ght
wildland fi res across the state.
Oregon Department of Forestry
A firefighter working on wildfires in s outhern Oregon. Fighting wildfires in Oregon this
season has cost $340 million, state officials said Monday.
That’s more than one-third
of the personnel deployed to
combat wildfi res nationwide,
Grafe said.
The most dangerous fi res
started in late July and early
August. The region has been
dry since mid-June, with no
signifi cant rainfall until Sun-
day. Tens of thousands of
lightning strikes contributed to
the severity of the fi re season.
Smoke had already cap-
tured the attention of most of
the state, when the human-
caused Eagle Creek F ire
sparked this month in the
state’s scenic gem, the Colum-
bia Gorge, trapped 150 hik-
ers and threatened Portland’s
water supply, the Bull Run
Watershed.
Fire crews kept the fi re
from that crucial water supply
and from the Multnomah Falls
Lodge, where fl ames came
within 40 feet of the historic
structure.
“A lot of what this fi re was
doing was spotting out ahead
of itself within communities,
and they were just having to go
after it, and catch it,” said Ore-
gon Fire Marshal Jim Walker.
“They did that hand-in-hand
with all of the resources, part-
nering together.”
Rain on Sunday evoked
widespread excitement in the
Gorge, where fi refi ghters con-
tinued to battle fl ames visible
from Interstate 84.
“I think we are in good
place with the rain and the con-
ditions,” Grafe said.
Gov. Kate Brown deployed
the Oregon National Guard in
August to respond to several
severe fi res. National Guard
helicopters assisted with the
rescue of trapped hikers and
poured 1.3 million gallons
of water on burning land and
structures. The Department of
Forestry has released the heli-
copters after 45 days of duty.
The conditions on air per-
sonnel are as bad, if not
worse, than combat, said Dave
Stuckey, deputy director of the
Oregon Military Department.
The state placed 950
National Guardsmen on state
active duty, a high for any
year since Hurricane Katrina
in 2005, when 1,979 Ore-
gon National Guard personnel
were deployed, Stuckey said.
Fire crews have suffered
no fatalities, but there have
been about 34 injuries among
National Guard personnel and
23 among forestry personnel.
The governor’s order to
deploy the National Guard
covered four fi res: Eagle
Creek, Nena Springs, Milli
and Chetco Bar.
Those four fi res alone
threatened 19,978 residences
and destroyed 10. Nearly 8,000
people were evacuated in those
areas. The cost of fi ghting the
fi res was about $15.3 million,
said Oregon Fire Marshal Jim
Walker.
Oregon is one of the few
states with a wildfi re insurance
policy, but that will cover only
42,000 acres, or about 6 per-
cent of the affected areas in the
state, Walker said.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
Saving Multnomah Lodge: ‘We didn’t want Oregon to lose that’
Fire crews work
to protect Mult-
nomah Falls and
the Multnomah
Falls Lodge,
which was built
in 1925, from the
Eagle Creek Fire
near Troutdale.
By JIM RYAN
The Oregonian
PORTLAND — Rick Buck
could feel the fi re coming.
Winds swirled like little
tornadoes just yards from the
Multnomah Falls Lodge. The
air alternated between hot and
cold. Thick smoke boiled in,
burning his eyes.
Buck, the proprietor of the
historic 1925 building, felt
helpless.
“I just said to myself, ‘I’m
out of here,’” he recalled.
Soon, fl ames ripped across
the ridge at the top of the falls.
They swept down the hillside
and raced toward the squat stone
structure with a wooden roof.
Trees fell. Temperatures
surged. And fi refi ghters had
their marching orders: Protect
the lodge.
It was an exhausting over-
night fi refi ght, but the building
emerged unscathed — cedar
shakes and all.
“Multnomah Lodge is the
icon of Oregon,” said Lance
Lighty, a Eugene Springfi eld
Fire battalion chief called in
to help manage the blaze. “We
didn’t want Oregon to lose
that. And we weren’t going to
let the fi re win on this one.”
The wildfi re started Sept.
2 along the Eagle Creek Trail,
but it took off two nights later,
whipped by winds that pushed
it hard and fast toward the
falls, about 12 miles west in
the gorge.
The Eagle Creek Fire
now covers 48,387 acres and
has prompted evacuations
and the longest shutdown in
recent memory of Interstate
84 between Hood River and
Troutdale — an area often
Genna Martin/Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
closed in spurts when winter
storms hit.
Although most people have
returned home and the free-
way’s westbound lanes opened
Thursday, the fi re contin-
ues to burn and is 32 percent
contained.
The battle
Lighty had already had a
wild Labor Day.
He had helped make the
call that holiday Monday to
shut down the interstate in both
directions, working with the
Oregon Department of Trans-
portation. He had watched 30
mph-plus gusts shift and drive
fl ames and smoke through the
dense forest parched by a rain-
less summer.
Now the fi re was making
a beeline for Oregon’s high-
est waterfall and its name-
sake lodge, among the state’s
most revered destinations and
backdrops for countless family
vacations. A top tourist attrac-
tion, Multnomah Falls gets an
estimated 1 million to 1.5 mil-
lion visitors a year.
Lighty and his colleagues
knew they would need plenty
of fi refi ghters and a way to
douse the lodge roof and the
surrounding area from above.
The fi re was traveling so
fast over the steep slopes of
the Columbia River Gorge that
it was too late to try to remove
brush, cut down trees and dig
trenches to keep the fl ames
away. Water was the only
defense.
It was around 10 p.m. that
night when Lighty and other
fi re managers called for a Port-
land ladder truck and four
fi re engines. They also com-
missioned fi ve water tenders
from fi re departments in Forest
Grove, Gaston, Tualatin Valley
vand Hillsboro.
The crews rushed to the
gorge and set up at the base
of the falls. That’s where they
stayed well into the next day.
The plan?
Use the ladder truck as a
sprinkler, wetting down the
lodge’s roof and everything
within about 30 to 40 yards:
a footpath, the lodge’s back
W A NTED
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6 PM
The line held. But fl ames
still burned on the hillside
above, so fi refi ghters kept pour-
ing water on the periphery to
stop hot debris from rolling
downhill or embers from fl ying
onto the roof.
By late that evening, the
worst was over, yet fi refi ghters
would have to water down the
lodge and surroundings through
the following Thursday to make
sure their handiwork endured as
they dodged falling rocks and
trees from the cliffs and hillside
around the falls.
A fi re engine remains at the
scene just in case.
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L
to spray down the roof and
foliage.
By midnight, the fl ames
had wrapped around the
waterfall, lighting up the
ridge like a glowing horse-
shoe with the 620-foot falls
gushing through the middle.
In the next several hours, the
fl ames marched relentlessly
toward the lodge and the fi re-
fi ghters kept the hoses turned
on the line.
The blaze eventually sur-
rounded the lodge on three
sides. It burned down to the
sprinkler perimeter by about 4
a.m. or 5 a.m.
Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500
THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
A
patio, a 500-gallon propane
tank, vegetation and other
nearby structures.
Do the same with fi re
hoses. Draw water from a
nearby creek and keep the ten-
ders -- or water tankers with
pumps and hoses — as extra
reservoirs.
Some crews began by help-
ing lodge workers remove his-
toric photographs, furniture,
paintings, money and other
valuables from the building
and load them into vehicles.
Some moved outdoor furni-
ture and supplies inside. Other
crews set up hoses and started
Evening listings
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S EPTEMBER 19
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