By: Valentina Cheng

High temperatures, low humidity, and lightning threaten the safety of large parts of the Pacific Northwest. As of Sunday, the 22nd, over 621,00 acres had been burnt, and 547,000 more were under red flag warnings in the states of Oregon and Washington.

Thunderstorms moved across the region on Sunday over central and southeast Oregon as well as southern Washington. A spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal, John Hendricks, said that the lighting forecast for the next 36 hours would be notably dangerous after weeks of dry and hot weather.

These fires have been growing and spreading from such things as, “debris piles that had been burning weeks earlier but never fully extinguished, cars parked on dry grass, and farm equipment being used during harvest,” Mr. Hendricks stated.

In “Around the Northwest, hot, dry, windy weather fuels fires” Thomas Kyle-Milward, a public information officer with Northwest Incident Management Team 8. From the start of the Falls Fire, stated that the fires are growing nearly 50,000 acres in a day. Almost a week later, on July 16th, they grew over 64,000 acres in a day.

This morning, July 22nd, Central Oregon Daily News featured “Falls Fire grows another 12,000 acres as thunderstorms, winds strike,” stating that the Falls fire had been recently hit by a series of thunderstorms and outflows of the storms were at 25 mph, 50 mph for surrounding areas.

The evacuation of nearly 3,000 people was carried out, followed by 4,000 preparing to evacuate. The Falls Fire, spanning 121,000 acres, is now 16% contained. The Lone Rock Fire, covering 117,000 acres, is 40% contained, while Cow Valley Fire, at 133,000 acres stands at 78% containment. This data was updated on Monday from the Oregon Wildfire Response and Recovery.

Another large fire that has been affecting Oregon is the uncontained Durkee Fire. As of Monday, the fire has consumed over 170,000 acres in Malheur and Baker counties. As written in an article, “Firefighters focus on eastern Oregon’s Durkee fire as evacuations remain,” published by Central Oregon Public Broadcasting, “Oregon’s fire season, which started slow with rainy spring weather but rapidly worsened with an early July heat wave. As of Monday afternoon, four fires were burning more than 100,000 acres each, with the Durkee fire the largest of that group.”

Jessica Reed, a public information officer for the command team assigned to the fire, stated that the fires all over the Pacific Northwest have spread resources thin. In the New York Times, “Pacific Northwest Faces Critical Fire Risk as Wildfires Burn,” The Governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, said that fire crews from “California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington, were helping with the response.”

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/us/wildfires-lightning-oregon-washington.html
https://wildfire.oregon.gov/Pages/evacuations.aspx
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/22/eastern-oregons-durkee-fire/
https://www.nwpb.org/2024/07/16/around-the-northwest-hot-dry-windy-weather-fuels-fires/

Image Credit by Vladyslav Dukhin