(This story was originally published in The Elevator in June, 2023.)

It was September 9th, 2020. There was an orange overcast from smoke from the fires. The air was thick and it was hard to breathe. Many families were in a panic scattering to evacuate. Roads were congested from so many people evacuating.

As the wildfires season officially started on July 5, 2020, and still raged throughout September it devastated hundreds of people. The 2020 wildfire season was devastating to our community and destroyed more than 4,000 homes and tore through 1.1 million acres said Andrew Phelps. It was scary for thousands of people as over 400,000 were being evacuated from their homes and lands, according to The Guardian. They were in a panic as they were trying to get their valuables and all the animals off their ground. 

Even after they were safe to come back there was still a massive impact on the health of the people and animals “I couldn’t ride them for months after because of their lungs” said Ella Armenta who was one of the people who had to evacuate. 

The fires were burning weren’t the only worry with the blaze burning strong the smoke from the massive fire was covering Oregon. With the smoke covering more and more of Oregon there were starting to be advisories to stay at home and stay away from the smokey regions. With the air quality also affecting outdoor activities many businesses had to shut down during the hazardous warning.

One of the reasons the fires were so devastating was the fact of how dry and windy the season was. This significantly affected the fires for two main reasons. One they blow away the moisture in the air from the fires. Two one of the main components in combustion is oxygen and with the air blowing fresh oxygen into the fires at a high rate the fires tend to burn hotter and faster which then blows heat everywhere else causing the surroundings to dry out faster.

In 2020, 90% of the fires were caused by people, which is  20% more than the yearly average of 70% said ODF public information officer Jim Gerbach. Even with that high of a number, the biggest fire we had was started by just a strike of lighting. Which was not able to be put out swiftly due to the sharp extreme terrain and the 75 mph wind that night caused the fire to spread so fast. Due to the sharp terrain, they weren’t able to attack the fire straight on and instead had to drop water on it from helicopters. This gave the fire more time to spread and burn. 

With the 2023 wildfires fastly approaching. How will this season look?

Officials are predicting that the season will be drier and hotter than normal which may cause the wildfires to spike. All the growth we had this year during our rainy seasons may be a big component of the fires. “These kinds of wet springs really drives fuel development, making them more abundant,” said Oregon State University forestry professor John Bailey. With more fuel that means more chances of fires which causes the officials to be worried about the later days of the season. “Later on when we dry out, those fuels will dry out. Those fuels and the warmth toward the end of fire season is what have most foresters worried,” said Bailey. 

Oregon has been preparing for the 2023 wildfire season by adding 100 firefighters to its state crew after Senate Bill 762 passed in 2022 said Statesman Journal. The Bill provided 220 million dollars to help prevent and monitor wildfires. With that money, Oregon also purchased 93 remote cameras at 64 different locations across Oregon, said The Statesman Journal. 

With the season approaching soon the ODF (Oregon Department of Forestry) is gearing up their firefighters and getting them back in the grove or finding the grove for the new firefighters. “In June, we’ll be having all of our fire schools that will be going on to train all of our newer seasonals on basic firefighting skills,” said Jessica Prakke who works with ODF. “Then also our returning seasonals will be able to train them on some higher level stuff as well, so they can kind of move up the ladder in a sense and become better firefighters for it,” said Prakke. 

The season is already showing signs of being a bad one. There are 26 wildfires as of June 8, 2023. They have collectively burned over 3,000 acres of land. 

With the current fires already burning how as a community can you help? 

It is easy as having common sense, keeping away fire from brush, turning off burners, don’t light fireworks in the woods. There are some great organizations striving to keep Oregon green and the way it is. One of them is Keep Oregon Green.  On their website, they go over things on how an average person can prevent fires, at home, in nature, and even at work. Some of them are as simple as staying near your fire when burning and having a prevention measure in case the fire goes wild. 

If you own land having good maintenance on it could be the difference between 0 or 100 acres being burned. It’s important to go through your land each year before the wildfire season and clean up brush, dead plants, broken branches, and anything that you could imagine burning during a forest fire. 

If you have fields of dried brush or hay another good way to prevent future wildfires is something called a control burn. It is a safe and good way to burn old brush to make good soil and an effective way to burn up possible fuel for wildfires. Controlled burning is also known as prescribed burning, it is where fire managing experts choose a certain area to burn and make sure it only burns that specific area. There is a lot of thought and planning that goes into a prescribed burn tho. They have to map out exactly where to burn and also the conditions they are burning in. it cannot be hot or windy, that could cause that the fire to be unpredictable and spread without warning. It must be done by trained experts or it could cause more harm than good 

Keeping a lookout for wildfires and being precautions could be the difference between being safe in your community and home or having to evacuate due to the violent fires that rage every year and take so much from the community.