Wildfires To Come This Season May Be Worst Ever In California

TIMBER EXEC. PREDICTS AN EVEN WORSE WILDFIRE CRISIS TO COME

 Rob Freres

“Frankly, I think there’s a [2018 California] Camp Fire in Oregon’s future. I also believe it will be much worse than the four Tillamook fires that burned some 350,000 acres in today’s Tillamook State Forest.”

Our 99-year-old family-owned company lost 75 million board feet of timber in last September’s Santiam Fire. Trees of varying ages that were planted on 6,000 acres of company-owned land north of our mills in Lyons, Oregon, went up in smoke.

Salvage logging and replanting began immediately. Last winter, we planted 456,000 new seedlings. Another three million will be planted this year and next.

Much worse than our loss were the losses suffered by 700 families in the Santiam Canyon who lost their homes and businesses. Detroit and Gates were overrun by wind-driven flames on Sept. 9. High winds blew down power lines between Detroit and Mehama, sparking 13 fires.

Parts of Mills City and Lyons also burned, but the losses would have been much worse had the fire burned further west into Stayton and Salem. Instead, the wind shifted and it turned north into our lands.

Oregon is in big trouble – a direct result of an unprecedented wildfire crisis that is sweeping the western United States, posing an alarming and increasing risk to our state’s forests, rural communities and family-owned businesses.

Last summer’s 402,274-acre Santiam Fire was far from the worst wildfire to burn on federal lands. By far the worst was northern California’s 1,032,648-acre August Complex. The lightning-caused, wind-driven fire blew 38 separate fires into one giant fire that raced across six counties and wasn’t contained until Nov. 11. It was twice the size of the 2002 Biscuit Fire, Oregon’s largest in modern history.

For perspective, we have to go back to 1910, the year the Big Burn destroyed three million acres in northern Idaho and western Montana, most of it in a 48-hour firestorm that leveled several towns. Eighty-six died, one more than the death toll in the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed Paradise, California.

Frankly, I think there is a Camp Fire in Oregon’s future. I also believe it will be much worse than the four Tillamook fires that burned some 350,000 acres in today’s Tillamook State Forest between 1933 and 1951.