Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Fire

  • Where there’s smoke, there’s fire

    Last night, as I reported on my Hack Bend blog, the house across the street caught fire. It wasn’t terribly serious, as these things go: some hot embers from the chimney landed on the wood shake roof and sparked into flames. But the fire department came out in full force; there were four engines, the fire chief’s (or whomever’s) SUV, an ambulance, and police closing off the street.

    The weird thing is, we didn’t hear any of the emergency vehicles arrive, but other people in the neighborhood told us they heard them coming. Instead, around 6:20 I started noticing a rumbling noise coming from outside, but we were eating dinner and I didn’t think much of it—nothing that couldn’t be checked until we were done, anyway. It was my wife who took something out to the garage that heard the noise, too, and went to the window to see what it was.

    Imagine our surprise!

    So we ran outside and rubbernecked along with the rest of the neighborhood. Smoke was still rising from the roof next to the chimney while we were there; our neighbor next door told us she had seen the flames when she came out. They were still hosing the roof down, but got the smoke under control pretty quickly. After that, they tore out the chimney and the part of the roof that was (presumably) still hot and/or smoldering.

    Nobody was hurt. According to the KTVZ article, the fire did $25,000 worth of damage, with minor smoke damage inside the home.

    Here’s some of the pictures I took (when I finally had the presence of mind to run back in the house for the camera):

    Fire trucks on the scene

    Fire hydrant pumping water

    Fire fighters clearing the roof after a house fire

    Fire fighters clearing the roof after a house fire

    Fire fighters clearing the roof after a house fire

    Apologies for the mediocre quality of these pictures… it was dusk and the low-light conditions along with the zoom was enough to get the point, but some came out shaky. And actually, when it was starting to get really dark, they brought one of the engines over with a set of bright spotlights to illuminate the scene:

    Fire truck at dusk lighting up the scene

    You can see the light pole sprouting up from the top of the truck. And here’s a shot of the lighted-up scene at full dark:

    Fire truck lighting up the scene at night

    I actually think this last picture is kind of cool. Unfortunate set of circumstances, but you know what I mean.

  • Fire Update

    We’re all safe and sound from the 18 Fire, and we never had to evacuate. All is well.

    Here is a link to the Forest Service’s website on the 18 Fire; they have some really good images of the fire, better than anywhere else I’ve seen online. Pretty amazing.

  • 18 Fire

    18 Fire on Bessie ButteWe were on evacuation alert last night as a 600-acre wildfire burned only 3 miles or so from our house. We didn’t have to evacuate, thankfully, as the fire was moving south, away from any developments, but it sure made for an interesting evening.

    Here’s two links to local stories about the fire: Bend.com and The Bend Bulletin. I even have a couple of pictures I took myself, of Bessie Butte, where the fire was burning; there’s two resolutions: one at 640×480, and another at 1024×768.

    The fire is “officially” known as the “18 Fire” and less-officially also known as the “Bessie Butte Fire”. It was probably started by a lightning strike (though there’s no official word on that yet), and began burning enough to be noticed yesterday (Wednesday) around 1:30 PM. There was a terrific smoke plume; a friend described it as though an atomic bomb had been dropped. It could be seen for miles. Almost immediately they had fire crews fighting it, and the big airtankers were dropping retardant all over the area. I even saw a helicopter with a water bucket lowering to fill up in a pond as I was driving home.

    But all is well. I’ll post updates if there’s any further developments.

  • Wildfire

    This weekend saw the outbreak of the Davis Fire, located about 12 miles southwest of LaPine. Not close enough to us to pose any threat, but today the winds shifted (a “wind inversion” over Bend, the news reported) and smoke from the fire blanketed the area, making everything hazy. So much so, in fact, that the light was tinted red-orange, and the sun was so obscured as to appear as a red disk. Eerie.

    And around noon, we noticed that ash was falling, like light snow.

    And the fire season opens with a bang.