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137th Year, No. 16
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Crews make major gains on fi re
Elbow Creek Fire nears 23,000 acres, but is 38% contained as of Tuesday morning
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
Richard
Underwood
Lostine
Retired cop
found a
new home
WALLOWA — A retired police offi -
cer, Richard Underwood, settled in the
Lostine area 10 years ago and has found
a new home. Richard and his wife, Patti,
moved here after a visit to Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho. Returning to Oregon via the Lew-
iston Highway, they were going to move
to La Pine. They were going to stop and
see friends near Minam.
“When we came past (Stangel’s) buf-
falo ranch, we realized we were in the
wrong part of the state, so we moved
here instead of La Pine,” he said.
He and Patti, who works at Wal-
lowa Memorial Hospital, have fi ve
children, 15 grandchildren and 10
great-grandchildren.
He retired from Washington County
Sheriff ’s Offi ce in Hillsboro after 27 years
and misses some aspects of the job.
“I miss seeing the people every day,”
he said. “That’s part of being a police offi -
cer. One thing people don’t realize is that
if you see a police car at 3 in the morning
at a doughnut shop, it’s because it’s the
only place open.”
He said visits to his kids’ urban
homes are a good contrast to Wallowa
County.
“Every time we go to see our kids
in and beyond Portland, we remember
why we moved here,” he said.
Richard recently shared his thoughts
about living in Wallowa County.
What’s your favorite thing
about Wallowa County?
Everybody waves, and the real tech-
nical part of it is they wave with all of
their fi ngers. And there’s the (lack of)
traffi c and no traffi c signals.
What fun things are you plan-
ning in the county this summer?
We don’t go rafting, but we do go
fi shing up at the lake, and it’s peaceful.
The whole county is peaceful.
What are your thoughts about
the fi res in the county?
It’s hard to fathom that much coun-
try (burning) and people losing their
homes. The whole fi re season is bad.
People just have to be careful. On the
Fourth of July, I saw more fi reworks
around our home than if I’d gone to the
lake. It makes you wonder. Just think. We
lost a home to fi re a long time ago, and
it’s pretty devastating.
What have you learned from
living in Wallowa County?
There’s a lot of work to be done. My
wife and I are always working around
home, fi xing things.
What’s your advice for people
who are thinking about moving
here?
Be prepared for the freedom. You’ve
got a limited number of people here.
Over there, you only know the people
you work with — and people wave, but
they wave with one fi nger.
WALLOWA COUNTY
— The Elbow Creek Fire
grew into the second-larg-
est in the state of Oregon
last week, but crews have
been able to get an upper-
hand on the blaze that has
now scorched more than
22,000 acres.
As of Tuesday morn-
ing, July 27, the fi re,
INSIDE
A map of the Elbow
Creek Fire, Page A5
which started July 15, was
reported at 22,790 acres
and was 38% contained,
according to the latest
update from Type 1 Ore-
gon Department of For-
estry Incident Manage-
ment Team 3, the lead on
the fi re. The size of the
team has swelled over
the last week, and as of
Monday night, the group
fi ghting the fi re was 954
— more than the popula-
tion of Wallowa, where
they have set up their pri-
mary camp. Crews from at
least eight other states had
joined the Oregon crews in
battling the fi re.
Crews Monday night
focused on the Elbow
Creek area, as the fi re has
moved north along that
corridor in recent days.
Crews have worked on
containment lines in that
region, and have largely
slowed the fi re’s spread.
The rest of the fi re is
either in mop-up mode or
close to it.
Containment lines set
up along the fi re’s east
edge at Wildcat Creek have
held for more than a week.
Sickfoot Creek and Gross-
man Creek, which were
places fi re was spread-
ing south in drainages, has
been corralled, and crews
are fi nalizing lines and
moving to mop-up there.
Sunday
The fi re had grown to
22,681 acres Sunday, but
See Gains, Page A5
Homes
in path
of fi re
spared
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
from jumping over the dozer line.
We’re trying to get that line tighter
and get crews in there to put that
line tight against the black.”
His approximately 120 fi re-
fi ghters are hard at it.
“They use normal wildland fi re-
fi ghting tools — pulaskis, shovels
— and putting in hose lays,” he
said. “We have big tanks of water
at the top of a drainage and run
hoses down to the bottom of the
drainage … and we branch other
hoses off of it and take it out in the
woods and try to get a mop-up …
25 feet around the entire perime-
ter of our division. We’re working
on that slowly but surely.”
Brett Deedon, a trainee public
information offi cer with the state
Fire Marshal’s Offi ce, said there
EDEN BENCH — They
were given the notice to
evacuate within an hour
of the Elbow Creek Fire
starting.
Yet Dick and Shir-
ley Hone saw their home
spared despite the blaze’s
quick-burning nature when
it started the afternoon of
Thursday, July 15, and
almost immediately started
moving east.
“They saved, I think,
basically every structure,”
Shirley Hone told the Chief-
tain during an interview
Wednesday, July 21.
The Hones own the last
home on Eden Bench, clos-
est to Elbow Creek, Shirley
Hone said.
“I think within two hours,
it was burning hard right
below our house,” she said.
The couple heeded evac-
uation notices and were
out of their home by about
6 p.m., she said. Other fam-
ily members stayed over-
night at the home to watch
the place.
“We left the fi rst night,
and my two brothers-in-law
from Enterprise and Joseph
came and stayed at the
house,” Hone said.
She added they brought
a water truck and stayed at
the house in case they could
help.
They stayed in Enterprise
on July 15-16, but returned
home within about 36 hours
of evacuating.
“We just wanted to be
there. We built this house
ourselves, and it’s not easy
to leave a place like this,”
she said.
When she spoke to the
Chieftain, Hone said she
hadn’t measured how close
the fi re came to their home,
but her brothers-in-law “said
it was within 500 yards of
our lowest property.”
Hone had immense praise
for the eff orts put forth by
fi refi ghters who stopped the
blaze before it reached their
home.
“This state fi re group did
an outstanding job with this
fi re. It was moving very rap-
idly,” she said. “The orga-
nization this group has was
unbelievable, both aerial and
ground.”
Hone added that she
and her husband never felt
unsafe.
“These guys were right
on top of it. What they did
was totally amazing. And
the ground personnel was
See Weer, Page A5
See Spared, Page A5
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Jeff Weer, supervisor trainee for the Division Tango of the Elbow Creek Fire, talks about battling the blaze Thursday,
July 22, 2021, from the Bar B Ranch staging area near Promise. He’s been on the fi re since its initial outbreak a week
earlier.
Easy commute; hard job
Fighting fi re in own backyard brings it home
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
PROMISE — Fighting a wild-
fi re is no easy task, but it becomes
more meaningful when it’s in your
own backyard. That’s what Jeff
Weer said from the front line of the
Elbow Creek Fire near Promise on
Thursday, July 22.
“It’s hard work, it’s smoky,
it’s fun. I wouldn’t do this job if I
didn’t enjoy doing it,” he said at the
Bar-B Ranch staging area south of
Promise. “I just enjoy being out in
the fi eld, I enjoy the camaraderie of
the crews and the folks involved.”
His wife, Maria, is fully sup-
portive of her husband’s passion
for fi ghting wildfi re.
“I think that I am proud to see
him be able to help our commu-
nity in this way,” she said. “I know
fi ghting fi res is his passion and he’s
in his element. He’s happy he can
make a diff erence.”
The couple has a ranch near
Lostine, making it somewhat con-
venient for Jeff to make it to work
each day.
“I live here locally. I can go
home and sleep in my own bed
— it’s a 15-minute drive from my
house to the fi re camp,” he said.
“So I’m fortunate to be able to have
done that. There’s several nights I
did stay up here.”
But even when he’s sent to
fi res elsewhere, it’s still part of his
passion.
“I’m happy to be here. A lot of
times we get sent to other places,
other parts of the state or the coun-
try to fi ght fi re,” Jeff said. “I wasn’t
born and raised in Wallowa County
but I’ve lived here (and worked) for
the U.S. Forest Service working on
my 17th year. It’s all been here in
this district.”
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
A fi re line, cut with a bulldozer, crosses the forest fl oor near Promise on
Thursday, July 22, 2021 as fi re crews work to stop the spread of the Elbow
Creek Fire. As of the morning of July 27, the fi re was at 22,790 acres and was
fought by roughly 1,000 personnel.
There since the outbreak
Jeff is an engine captain with
the U.S. Forest Service. On the
Elbow Creek Fire he’s the super-
visor trainee on Division Tango.
He’s been on the fi re since it was
fi rst reported a week ago.
“My sole focus is on Division
Tango,” he said, but added that
his concern also is tying in with
neighboring Divisions Mike and
Whiskey. “We’ve had our rough
patches, but we’re holding our
own.”
He has a good grasp on the
progress.
“We’ve got people down there,
we’ve got an indirect dozer line
in, meaning it’s not tied in against
the fi reline, against the black,”
he said. “There’s unburned mate-
rial between the dozer line and the
black and we’re trying to keep it