NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Saturday, October 9, 2021
State says fire season over for half of Oregon
By JACK FORREST
The Oregonian
SALEM — Half of
Oregon is officially free of
fire season, while the state’s
eastern and southern regions
need significantly more rain
before they’re in the clear,
experts say.
Record-breaking Septem-
ber rainfall, longer nights
and more humid air have
signaled the beginning of
the end of a historic 2021
fire season. But fall rains
have a decades-long drought
to overcome in most of the
West, meaning thicker fuels
like timber aren’t yet satu-
rated by the season’s precip-
itation.
“We got what seemed
like a lot of rain, but it very
quickly soaked into the soil
and is running off,” Larry
O’Neill, an Oregon State
professor studying how
weather impacts wildfires,
said Thursday, Oct. 7. “So
it was a very good start to a
good wet season, but it really
didn’t do much to decrease
the severity of the drought
conditions.”
The Oregon Department
of Forestry has announced
an end to the fire season in
five of its 10 districts. Those
districts include Washing-
ton, Clatsop, Columbia,
Tillamook, Lane, Benton,
Lincoln, Polk and Yamhill
Bootleg Fire Incident Command via The Associated Press, File
A tanker drops retardant July 17, 2021, over the Mitchell Monument area at the Bootleg Fire
in Southern Oregon.
counties, as well as the south-
ern part of Linn County.
The five districts that
include most of Southern and
Eastern Oregon still remain
in fire season.
The end to fire season
lifts restrictions on indus-
trial operations in Oregon’s
forests — most notably the
need for a fire-watch service,
or an on-site worker trained
in firefighting.
We a t h e r f o r e c a s t -
ers expect Oregon to get
above-average rainfall
this autumn, but O’Neill is
tempering his expectations.
Forecasters also expected
last fall to be wetter than
average, he said, but the
season ended up being far
drier.
“We’ve had this trend,
especially the last 10 years,
where we’ve had dry falls,”
O’Neill said. “So basically,
we need to actually see the
rain in the rain gauge before
we can really be sure.”
Forecast for Pendleton Area
| Go to AccuWeather.com
TODAY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
Times of clouds
and sun
Mostly cloudy, a
shower; windy
Partly sunny and
cool
Mostly sunny and
cool
Mostly cloudy and
remaining cool
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
64° 48°
61° 37°
56° 27°
56° 36°
56° 33°
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
68° 54°
63° 40°
61° 30°
62° 36°
61° 35°
OREGON FORECAST
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Seattle
Olympia
60/50
58/43
65/42
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
64/51
Lewiston
60/49
68/55
Astoria
60/50
Pullman
Yakima 64/49
59/46
65/48
Portland
Hermiston
64/53
The Dalles 68/54
Salem
Corvallis
65/48
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
61/40
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
67/50
64/40
61/36
Ontario
69/39
Caldwell
Burns
65°
38°
71°
41°
86° (1980) 26° (1931)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
Albany
64/49
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
69/44
0.00"
0.00"
0.17"
2.67"
1.73"
5.84"
WINDS (in mph)
65/38
62/27
0.00"
0.02"
0.24"
5.02"
8.82"
9.45"
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 57/37
65/51
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
HERMISTON
Enterprise
64/48
66/51
60°
35°
69°
44°
93° (1911) 21° (1916)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
60/47
Aberdeen
58/44
61/45
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Wenatchee
58/49
Today
Sun.
WSW 8-16
WSW 7-14
WSW 12-25
WSW 12-25
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
62/31
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
7:04 a.m.
6:20 p.m.
11:09 a.m.
8:22 p.m.
First
Full
Last
New
Oct 12
Oct 20
Oct 28
Nov 4
If history is any indica-
tion, short stints of warm,
dry October weather can
slow progress made by early-
fall rains, O’Neill said.
The threat of wildfire
also never truly goes away,
said John Saltenberger, a fire
weather meteorologist for
the Northwest Interagency
Coordination Center in Port-
land.
A wildfire still can crop
up in the middle of winter,
Saltenberger said. But the
By ZACK DEMARS
The Bulletin
SALEM — While half of
Oregonians say the state is
headed in the wrong direc-
tion, views on the state’s
economy have improved in
recent months.
Those are two of the key
takeaways from the Oregon
Values and Beliefs Center,
which surveyed more than
1,100 residents across the
state over the course of a
week late last month.
The first figure — with
49% saying the state is
headed on the wrong track,
compared to 45% who say its
on the right track — is closer
to the pessimistic lows of
last winter than highs of this
summer. In December, 52%
held “wrong track” views,
while only 42% said the same
in May.
Chad Kernutt, a 31-year-
old state employee in Albany,
said COVID-19 restrictions
passed down by state author-
ities while the public was
restricted from most of the
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
-10s
-0s
0s
showers t-storms
10s
rain
20s
flurries
30s
snow
40s
ice
50s
60s
cold front
E AST O REGONIAN
— Founded Oct. 16, 1875 —
70s
East Oregonian (USPS 164-980) is published Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,
by the EO Media Group, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801. Periodicals
postage paid at Pendleton, OR. Postmaster: send address changes to
East Oregonian, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801.
Copyright © 2021, EO Media Group
90s
100s
warm front stationary front
Bend bans sale, possession
and use of fireworks
ENTERPRISE — This summer’s Elbow
Creek Fire cost more than $25 million to
suppress, according to a spokesperson for the
Umatilla National Forest on Monday, Oct. 4.
“Our records show the cost-to-date is
$25.3 million,” said Darcy Weseman, public
affairs officer for the forest.
The fire started on the afternoon of July
15 in an area along the Grande Ronde River
upriver from Troy. At one point, the fire was
burning nearly 23,000 acres in northern
Wallowa County. More than 1,000 firefight-
ers were mustered to fight the blaze in steep
terrain as it covered the county with smoke
for weeks. As of Aug. 2, the fire was 95%
contained and extinguished not long after.
At present, Weseman said, the cause of the
blaze is still under investigation.
BEND — Despite a last minute push from
opponents, the Bend City Council unani-
mously approved a ban on the sale, posses-
sion and use of all fireworks.
The new ordinance will take effect in
November, said city attorney Ian Leitheiser,
and violators can be fined up to $750.
The council adopted the ban Wednesday,
Oct. 6, as an attempt to reduce wildfire risk.
“It just takes one random firework to start
one major event,” Mayor Sally Russell said
after making a reference to the fireworks that
started the Eagle Creek Fire in 2017.
The city council temporarily banned legal
fireworks the week leading up to the Fourth
of July in response to a historic heat wave and
drought conditions.
— EO Media Group
110s
high
low
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regrets any errors. If you notice a mistake in the paper, please call 541-966-0818.
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“Personally, it scares the
crap out of me because I’m
compromised in the first
place. Coming from that
standpoint, it upsets me quite
a bit when people don’t do
what they’re supposed to do.”
Concer ns about the
pandemic center largely
around the economy and
community health more than
individual health. Eight in 10
said they were “somewhat or
very concerned” about the
pandemic’s impact on the
economy, and more than
three-quarters had the same
level of concern about the
health of their communities.
Meanwhile, just 60% said
they were concerned about
their own health.
Views on the state’s econ-
omy are divided, too: About
half say the economy is good
or very good, while the other
half calls it poor or very poor.
That’s up from previous
surveys. Just 30% of resi-
dents rated the economy as
good or very good in April
2021 and June 2020, poll-
sters said.
Elbow Creek Fire cost more
than $25M to suppress
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In the App Store:
80s
year’s legislative session was
a sign of a state off track.
“The constant masking,
the constant overregulation
of businesses, telling them
what they can and can’t do,
and now the mandates on
vaccines,” Kernutt said. “I
believe it should be handled
at the local level.”
Feelings about the state’s
direction vary on demo-
graphic lines. The youngest
and oldest groups were more
likely to say the state’s on the
right track, and those in rural
areas tend to be more pessi-
mistic about the state’s over-
all direction, according to the
survey, which had a margin
of error between 1.8% and
2.9%.
When it comes to the
COVID-19 pandemic, most
Oregonians (56%) believe
it’s not yet safe to open busi-
nesses and fully restart the
economy. Just 36% of Orego-
nians said it’s important to
fully reopen the economy.
“No, I don’t think we’re
quite there yet,” said Deb
Runkle, 62, of Bandon.
IN BRIEF
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
Looking back
Oregon’s 2021 fire season
will go down as one of the
state’s all-time worst, Salt-
enberger said, but it’s been
far less destructive than the
2020 fire season.
At least 1,863 fires have
burned more than 800,000
acres in Oregon so far this
year, according to the state
Department of Forestry.
Nearly 2,000 fires burned
more than 1 million acres
last year.
President Joe Biden
declared Oregon’s 2020
fire season a federal emer-
gency, giving the state
support from the Federal
Emergency Management
Agency and prompting the
Oregon Office of Emergency
Management to better docu-
ment the season’s human
toll.
Last year’s wildfires
killed nine people and
destroyed 4,132 homes,
according to the state emer-
gency management agency.
Damage from the 2021
season has been far less
documented, though state
officials say at least 91
homes were destroyed in the
413,765-acre Bootleg Fire
— the fourth-largest blaze
in Oregon history. A fire-
fighter from Medford also
died when he was hit by a
falling tree while fighting
the Middle Fork Complex
of wildfires east of Eugene.
But this year’s f ires
burned largely in unpopu-
lated or sparsely populated
areas, sparing the state from
the level of damage seen in
2020.
“There were some fires,
and we lost a couple iconic
lookout towers and burned
th rough some beloved
wilderness areas,” O’Neill
said. “I really feel that we
were very fortunate, at least
here in Northwest Oregon,
because going into August
things were looking so much
bleaker.”
Survey: Oregonians split on
whether state is on ‘right track’
NATIONAL EXTREMES
High 100° in Vernon, Texas Low 18° in Bodie State Park, Calif.
convergence of extreme
fire weather, dry conditions
and ignition sources such
as lightning or campfire
sparks is what makes wild-
fires particularly costly and
dangerous.
The odds of such a
convergence are already
decreasing, Saltenberger
said, as the region sees fewer
thunderstorms and more
rain that dampens fuels like
timber and brush.
“That’s not to say it’s
impossible,” he said, “but
it’s unlikely.”
Historically there’s a
small jump in new fires
when Oregon’s deer hunting
season begins in early Octo-
ber, but those fires rarely
cause widespread damage,
Saltenberger said.
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