Page 6C
OUTSIDE
East Oregonian
Saturday, August 25, 2018
For-profit firefighters find work in Southern Oregon
By EMILY CURETON
Oregon Public Broadcasting
No one was home at a
house deep in the woods of
Josephine County. The peo-
ple who live here had evacu-
ated days ago along with hun-
dreds of their neighbors. As
flames from the Taylor Creek
Fire got closer and closer, the
firefighters showed up.
They came to prepare for
the worst so that if the wind
picked up, they’d be ready to
dash down the driveway and
save this house, even if the
forest burned around it.
The firefighters protecting
this house were structure pro-
tection specialists from 100
miles away, called in by the
Oregon State Fire Marshal.
The firefighters who nor-
mally cover this neighbor-
hood work at private compa-
nies. That means the people
who know these steep hol-
lows and their microclimates
best don’t have a formal-
ized role in this emergency
operation.
“When it comes to rec-
ognition within the state
level fire service. We don’t
exist,” said Phil Turnbull, the
local chief of Rural/Metro,
a national company filling
public safety gaps across the
West.
In Josephine County,
Rural/Metro is the largest
of two for-profit fire depart-
ments serving a geographic
area more than twice the size
of Portland. When wildland
fire threatens homes covered
by private crews, they’re
out there risking their lives
right alongside public agen-
cies and the contractors they
bring in.
But without recognition
through state law, Turnbull
said this cooperation hap-
pens informally, almost “on
the sly.”
“Nobody is arguing that
we don’t have a responsi-
bility or a contractual obli-
gation to our customers. But
here we have a fire threaten-
ing hundreds of homes, and
three out of every 10 homes
up there have not been pay-
ing for fire protection, at
least to us,” Turnbull said.
Rural/Metro is subscrip-
tion based. The average
Scott Stoddard/The Daily Courier via AP, File
In this Monday, July 30, 2018, file photo, flames from the Taylor Creek are reflected in the Rogue River at the Hell-
gate Bridge near Grants Pass. The fire caused by a lightning storm caused people to be forced from their homes
near Grants Pass. The firefighters protecting some of the houses were structure protection specialists from 100
miles away, called in by the Oregon State Fire Marshal.
Scott Stoddard/The Daily Courier via AP, File
In this Sunday, July 29, 2018 file photo, flames from a fire work their way through
dense trees near Grants Pass.
member pays a few hundred
dollars a year. And no, the
firefighters don’t let houses
burn down if the owners
don’t subscribe. Turnbull
said first responders don’t
pay attention to the funding
mechanisms when they’re
dispatched by 911.
“(The person) will, how-
ever, receive a bill,” he said.
For non-members, that
bill could easily exceed
$10,000. This includes peo-
ple who get help because
of a car accident or medical
emergency.
Turnbull described how
he and some friends tried to
start a public fire department
in the early 1970s.
“We discovered very
Drought puts burden
on Oregon ranchers
By GREG STILES
Mail Tribune
EAGLE POINT — Live-
stock producers are feeling
the effects of drought at an
intensifying rate.
On the heels of two sparse
rain years, pastures are dry-
ing up and herds might follow
suit if the trend continues into
next year.
Fourth-generation Eagle
Point rancher Ron Anderson
figures his fellow ranchers are
in a world of hurt.
“We had no snowpack
to speak of in comparison to
what we used to,” Anderson
said. “So when the snow’s
gone, you know the runoff
slows down. If you’re in the
right place, you still get some
runoff. There are places in
Oregon where once that snow
is gone, they don’t get noth-
ing. If we don’t get a wet win-
ter, or a lot of snow this year,
then we’re really in for it.
That could be a disaster.”
Anderson said it is remi-
niscent of the climate shift in
the late 1970s.
“If you’re not in the right
place, you can’t irrigate,”
Anderson said. “You might
only get one or two irriga-
tions, well that don’t grow
any feed, so that makes it dif-
ficult. You take a dry year on
dry-land farming, you might
get nothing.”
While herd sizes have
remained stable over the past
decade, they’re much smaller
than they were 40 years ago,
Anderson said. At the same
time, there are fewer acres
devoted to hay and feed
production.
With pastures drying up
this summer, farmers and
quickly that there was no
real community support for
that whatsoever,” he said.
Raising local property
taxes was a nonstarter. But
they still wanted to profes-
sionalize firefighting. At the
time, the only option for
structure protection was a
small, mom-and-pop opera-
tion doing what it could with
outdated equipment.
“I remember a newspaper
editorial saying, if trapped
in a burning building in the
county, say your prayers,”
he said.
Eventually, Turnbull and
that first crew figured out
how to convince people to
pay for something new: by
making home insurance
rates drop if they supported
a professional force. Just
like taxes, the rates depend
on property value.
It worked. He said they
had a profitable company
after a few years, and it
was eventually acquired by
a national chain. Now they
maintain the same safety
standards as public agencies.
But those standards are
voluntary, Turnbull said.
Therein lies one of the rubs,
according to a guy who’s
spent his entire adult life fire-
fighting in this community.
“I’m not even an advo-
cate of fire protection should
all be private, or it should all
be public. That’s irrelevant.
That’s funding mechanisms.
But it should work,” he said.
So does it work?
Faced with that ques-
tion, he paused. He praised
his crews and his company.
They put out fires admirably,
he said.
But in the long run?
“We’re allowing it to
work well enough,” he
said. “And we’re trapped
because you can’t take a step
backwards.”
He said broad, communi-
ty-wide planning isn’t pos-
sible with 10,000 individual
subscriptions.
Competition between fire
departments can create more
problems.
Josephine County Com-
missioner Lily Morgan said
she’s gotten calls from con-
stituents unhappy about that.
“I have received com-
plaints from citizens who
chose the company they felt
was best for their needs and
yet they get a bill from the
alternate one who got dis-
patched by 911 and they
didn’t feel that was fair,”
Morgan said.
Officials can’t force a
public department on voters,
who have resoundingly shot
down the idea more than
once over the years.
“It’s not that we don’t care
about each other, or that we
aren’t grateful for the help,”
Morgan said. “It’s a commu-
nity that does not believe in
big government. They don’t
want more involvement of
government in their lives.”
Taking care of things
yourself can get expensive.
Peter Sedlow pays every
month for a fire subscription
with Rural/Metro.
“We’ve had that since
we’ve been there. We’ve
been there 30 years,” he
said.
Sedlow pays state taxes
for wildland firefighters,
but he still doesn’t feel like
his home could actually be
defended, because it’s sur-
rounded by a thicket of pine
trees.
“We’d love to get rid of
those trees, and that’s going
to take more money than
we’ve got,” he said.
Sedlow and his wife
recently evacuated ahead of
the Taylor Creek Fire.
BLOOMIN’ BLUES
Rabbitbrush cures what ails you,
from toothaches to smallpox
By BRUCE BARNES
For the East Oregonian
Name: Gray Rabbitbrush
Scientific name: Ericamer-
ia nauseosa or Chrysotham-
nus nauseosus
Timothy Bullard/The Grants Pass Daily Courier via AP, File
In this July 15, 2014, file photo, rider Felicia Bias herds
some of the 1,200 head of cattle at the Dinsdale Farms
on Riverbanks Road near Grants Pass, Ore. Oregon
livestock producers are feeling the effects of drought
this year at an intensifying rate. On the heels of two
sparse rain years, pastures are drying up and herds
might follow suit if the trend continues into 2019.
ranchers resort to buying hay,
more than likely from outside
of the Rogue Valley.
“People will have to buy
some hay to survive this
drought,” Anderson said.
“The price is pretty high right
now compared to last year ...
good alfalfa will be $200 and
something a ton.”
Anderson is among the
cattlemen whose herds graze
locally, then are moved across
the state line in the winter.
“There’s worse drought in
California than there is here,”
Anderson said.
Last week, Jackson
County livestock produc-
ers gained eligibility to apply
for 2018 Livestock Forage
Disaster Program benefits for
small grain, native pasture
and improved pasture.
The program provides
compensation for produc-
ers who suffer grazing losses
for covered livestock due to
drought on privately owned
or leased land, or fire on fed-
erally managed land.
“We’re so far behind on
water that we won’t catch
up,” said Phillip Morton, local
executive director for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s
Farm Service Agency, which
administers the disaster relief
program.
The lack of ready forage
and high cost of hay could hit
hard, Morton said.
“Local herds disappear,”
he said. “Producers can’t
afford to feed them, and it
becomes cost-prohibitive to
feed your herds, so folks start
selling off cattle. We’ll see
less livestock in the county,
and producers will get a set-
back in their herd develop-
ment. Of course, if a lot of
cattle start showing up on
market, the natural thing is for
prices to come down.”
While the drought assis-
tance is welcome to livestock
owners, it’s not a sure thing.
“The biggest complaint
I hear is these guys meticu-
lously fill out the forms and
they never hear anything,”
said Applegate Valley farmer
Warren Merz.
Gray Rabbitbrush is a very
common plant from south-
west Canada to California, to
Mexico and Texas. It is prob-
ably just as common as sage-
brush, and from a distance the
two plants look nearly alike.
Both plants are a light-gray-
green color, but rabbitbrush is
smaller and rounded in shape,
and sagebrush can be much
larger and with an irregular
shape. Rabbitbrush stems are
coated with dull-white hairs
along with thread-like, linear,
gray-green leaves.
It takes a bit of staring at
the plants as you whiz by on
the highway (have someone
else drive) until you notice
that some of the rounded
plants look definitely green
instead of grayish. The green
plants are called Green Rab-
bitbrush. If you stop and look
closely, about the only differ-
ence between the two you’ll
see is that Green Rabbitbrush
has larger and greener leaves.
Both plants have the same size
and shape, usually grow in the
same habitat, and bloom about
the same time. Several years
ago, some botanists decided
having one species green and
the other one greenish-gray
was just too simple so they
gave Green Rabbitbrush a
new scientific name, putting it
in a different genus.
In late summer and early
fall both rabbitbrush species
are easy to spot. They are
densely covered on the top
Photo by Bruce Barnes
Gray Rabbitbrush, Ericameria nauseosa/Chrysotham-
nus nauseosus
with a layer of bright yellow
flowers. It is in the sunflower
family, so it has its flowers
borne in heads.
The source for the name
“rabbitbrush” is anyone’s
guess – possibly rabbits ate it,
or used its crowded stems to
hide in. The stems and leaves
often have glands that secrete
a smelly resin, likely referring
to the nauseous odor, hence
“nauseosa.”
Gray Rabbitbrush has had
an exceptional variety of uses
for many tribes across west-
ern North America. What
is listed here is only a sam-
pling to show the value of this
plant. Some of these uses are
true for only to one variety of
the species. Medicinal uses
include treatment for colds,
toothaches, coughs, skin
sores, smallpox, nightmares,
tuberculosis, blisters, chest
pain, gynecological ailments,
diarrhea, stomach cramps,
urinary aid, venereal disease,
and bladder problems.
Some tribes used the plant
as winter forage for horses,
and a couple of tribes used the
bark for chewing gum. Others
made windbreaks from the
bushes, and used the stems to
make brushes and brooms.
The plant provides a vola-
tile oil for fuel, and the stems
were used to make arrows, to
pierce their ears, and to weave
baskets.
Seeds were ground for
food, and the plant was mixed
with cornmeal mush to eat.
Many tribes also used the
plant in ceremonies.
Where to find: This is
the last article for the year,
so here is a plant you can
observe by the roadsides from
now into October. It grows
in dry mountain valleys and
in dry, low elevations wher-
ever sagebrush is likely to
be, including along Interstate
84 from Cabbage Hill to The
Dalles. The bright yellow
flowers should start appear-
ing about Round-Up time.