NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
A8
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Fire breaks curbed June blaze
lar terrain in Malheur County.
That fi re prompted local res-
idents and BLM offi cials to talk
about wildfi res, and residents cre-
ated the Malheur County Commu-
nity Wildfi re Protection Plan.
That plan included building fi re
breaks across public and private
land.
Johnson said the system of fi re
breaks “gives our personnel some-
thing to work off of,” but it’s not
guaranteed, because of varied
weather patterns, that the breaks
will stop a blaze dead in its tracks.
“It’s all dependent on fi re activ-
ity, because you can have fi re whirls
that bring embers across the road,”
Johnson said.
But with the Willowcreek Fire,
the breaks fulfi lled their purpose
despite the gusty winds.
“Being proactive saved us from
having a fi re twice as big,” said Toby
McBride, a volunteer with the Vale
Rangeland Fire Protection District
who helps maintain the fi re breaks
and was on the ground during the
Willowcreek Fire. “The wind was
blowing pretty good, but the fi re
burned right up to the lines and went
out. I don’t think we would’ve held
it at the road without them.”
Robinson agreed.
“Fuel breaks helped fi re-
fi ghters contain the Willow-
creek Fire without bulldozers or
other heavy equipment,” he said.
“This project’s success shows us
how important collaboration can
be to protect local communities
from wildfi res.”
By CLAYTON FRANKE
Baker City Herald
VALE — A tractor that plowed
swathes through rangeland in north-
ern Malheur County more than two
decades ago is a major reason why the
Willowcreek Fire, the biggest blaze in
the area so far this year, stopped when
it did in late June, according to offi -
cials from the Bureau of Land Man-
agement’s Vale District.
A series of fi re breaks dug 22 years
ago made “all the diff erence with sup-
pression eff orts on the Willowcreek
Fire,” according to a July 15 press
release.
The blaze, which started on pri-
vate land north of Vale on June 28
and burned 40,274 acres, mostly on
that day and the next, was fully con-
tained as of July 11, said Larisa Bog-
ardus, public aff airs offi cer for the Vale
District.
The cause of the fi re is still under
investigation, Bogardus said on Thurs-
day, July 21. The fi re didn’t burn any
structures, and no one was hurt. The
fi re burned about 24,400 acres of pri-
vate land, 15,300 acres of public land
managed by the BLM and about 572
acres of state ground.
Flames likely would have spread
across more of the sagebrush and grass
range if not for those fi re breaks, said
Marcus Johnson, who was incident
commander on the Willowcreek Fire.
“As an incident commander, it’s a
huge benefi t for us because a lot of us
know where these lines are and have a
good idea of where we can catch them
when the fi res start to go extreme,” said
Kristen Munday/Bureau of Land Management
An aerial photo shows how the Willowcreek Fire in late
June 2022 was stopped when it reached a fi re break that
was made about 22 years ago and is maintained annually.
Johnson, who’s a wildland fi re techni-
cian for the Vale District.
“Any fi re that started on your urban
interface area, we’re just trying to keep
it off federal land and vice versa —
if we have a fi re on federal land, we
really don’t want to push it onto the
urban interface,” Johnson said.
The fi re breaks are created using
tractors with metal disk attachments
that remove vegetation and expose
bare dirt, which deprives fl ames of
fuel. Workers also mow grass and use
herbicides to control grass.
Kristen Munday/Bureau of Land Management
A fi re break, built along a road, helped stop the Willow-
creek Fire in late June 2022 in northern Malheur County.
When built near roads, the breaks
create a 50-foot buff er — a zone where
fi re crews have a better chance to stop
advancing fl ames.
Each spring or summer, typically in
May or June, BLM workers maintains
the fi re breaks, Johnson said. They
bring in heavy machinery to clear out
vegetation in preparation for fi re sea-
son. Johnson said they completed this
year’s maintenance on the breaks in the
Willowcreek Fire area just two weeks
before it ignited on a 100-degree day
with gusty west winds.
“We’ve been maintaining these
manmade fuel barriers over the last
two decades,” said Justin Robinson,
fuels technician for the Vale District.
“We’re making it safer for our fi re-
fi ghters and our communities.”
Fire break history
The idea for the fi re breaks that
helped stop the Willowcreek Fire
dates back almost 22 years.
In 2000, the Jackson Fire burned
about 80,000 acres — twice as many
as the Willowcreek Fire — of simi-
OSP delves into Finley Creek case
By DICK MASON
The Observer
UNION COUNTY — A
four-decade-old Union County
mystery may be on the verge of
being solved or taking another
unforgettable twist.
The Oregon State Police
are set, next month, to con-
duct an examination and pos-
sible excavations at a site near
Finley Creek, 18 miles north of
La Grande, where the remains
of an unidentifi ed woman were
found in August 1978.
“We are planning on
mid-August or late August,”
said Sgt. Sean Belding, a mem-
ber of OSP’s major crimes
division.
Belding will be joined by
Calvin Davis, director of the
OSP’s crime lab in Pendle-
ton, and Dr. Nici Vance, from
the State Medical Examiner’s
Offi ce, plus members of the Fin-
ley Creek Jane Doe Task Force.
Belding, Davis and Vance
recently decided to conduct
the examination and possible
digs after learning of how a
pair of cadaver dogs responded
on Thursday, June 23, at the
Finley Creek site. Each dog,
trained to smell human bones
and brought there by the task
force, indicated they had found
buried human bones at the
same two places while operat-
ing separately.
Belding, who accompa-
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Cadaver dog Brynn and a team of volunteers including Suzanne
Timms, seated, in August 2021 investigate the area where the
Finley Creek Jane Doe was discovered near Elgin in 1978. With
Timms are her relatives Jennifer Harringten, center, and Wenda
Parr, left, plus Karin Anderson of Dallas, Texas, who is a mem-
ber of a Reporter’s Notebook group that is producing podcasts
about the search for the identity of the Finley Creek Jane Doe.
A missing person poster for
Patricia Otto sits on the cof-
fee table of her daughter,
Suzanne Timms, on Oct. 26,
2021, at Timms’ home in Walla
Walla. Timms believes the Fin-
ley Creek Jane Doe, found near
Elgin in 1978, is her mother.
nied the task force on its June
23 visit, said he was impressed
with the interest each dog
showed in the two sites. The
canines laid down at the same
place, an indication they were
positive human bones were
underneath the location, said
Melinda Jederberg of La
Grande, a leader of the Finely
Creek Jane Doe Task Force,
which she founded in 2019.
This was the second time
the cadaver dogs were brought
to the Finley Creek site by
the task force. They were also
brought there in the summer of
she is certain the Finley Creek
Jane Doe is her mother, Patri-
cia “Patty” Otto, of Lewiston,
Idaho, who has been missing
since Aug. 31, 1976.
“Oregon is giving resources
toward the case. It gives me
hope,” she said.
Timms fi rst suspected that
the Finley Creek Jane Doe
was her mother in 2021 when
she saw an image created by
a forensic artist in Massachu-
setts, Anthony Redgrave, the
operator of Redgrave Research
Forensic Services. Red-
grave was assisting the Finley
Suzanne Timms/Contributed Photo
2021, when they also indicated
they detected human bones
there.
The task force members
have never dug at the Finley
Creek site because it is a crime
scene and thus it would be ille-
gal to disrupt it.
A daughter who will
not give up hope
Suzanne Timms of Walla
Walla, Washinhton, who is
assisting with the search as
a volunteer, is elated that the
OSP investigators will be
examining the site because
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A possible Lewiston,
Idaho, murder
Timms believes her mother
was murdered in Lewiston by
her father and then taken to
Finley Creek where he buried
her in a shallow grave.
The
OSP’s
autopsy
records for the Finley Creek
Jane Doe, however, do not
match those of Patty Otto.
Timms believes the dis-
crepancy is due to an error
made by the OSP’s medi-
cal examiner while doing
examinations of the skeletal
remains of two Jane Does in
his offi ce at about the same
time in 1978. She suspects
he assigned his reports to the
wrong remains, because his
report for the second Jane
Doe matches her mother’s
autopsy photos and dental
records.
Should human bones be
found at the Finley Creek site
they will likely be tested by
the state to determine if their
DNA indicates they are those
of Timms’ mother. Should
such bones turn out not to be
those of Patty Otto, another
layer of mystery will be added
to the Finley Creek case.
Timms is striving to keep
the memory of her mother
alive with a ceremony in Lew-
iston, Idaho, set for Aug. 4,
which would have been her
70th birthday. Seventy signs
with Otto’s name will be car-
ried by 70 people for 24 min-
utes down main street in Lew-
iston. The time will symbolize
Otto’s age, for she was 24 in
1976 when she disappeared.
Timms is touched by the
number of people who are vol-
unteering to participate in the
memorial.
“It shows that my mother is
not forgotten,” she said.
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Creek Jane
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Force, and
the image
he
cre-
ated looked
very similar
Anthony
to Timms’
Redgrave of
mother.
Massachusetts
The images
in the spring
were cre-
of 2020
ated based
created this
on photos
reconstruction
of the skel-
of the face of
etal remains
a Jane Doe
found
in
hunters found
1978
—
more than 40
years ago near those bones
are believed
Elgin.
to have been
cremated by the state after they
were found, Timms said.
Other details have con-
tributed to Timms’ belief that
the Finley Creek Jane Doe is
her mother. The remains were
found with a white shirt and red
pants, which is what Patty Otto
was last seen wearing before
she disappeared in 1976.
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