In Shifting Winds, Central Oregon Wildfire Grows to Almost 30,000 Acres

New York Times

3 days ago

Gusty, shifting winds and high temperatures have enabled a wildfire in Central Oregon to spread rapidly, reaching nearly 30,000 acres and prompting evacuations in ranches and communities in two counties, the authorities said on Tuesday.
The Cram fire was first reported on Sunday, burning in vegetation of grass, brush and juniper along U.S. Route 97, a north-south highway, near the sparsely populated area of Willowdale in Jefferson County.
By Monday afternoon, the fast-moving flames covered 4,500 acres, prompting evacuations in the county and in adjacent Wasco County, according to the Oregon State Fire Marshal agency. The state fire marshal, Mariana Ruiz-Temple, called the weather conditions 'extremely challenging' in a statement.
'The wind was all day 25 miles per hour, and the terrain is a lot of hills, ridges and valleys, which makes it worse,' Gert Zoutendijk, a spokesman for the fire marshal, said in an interview.
'The wind shifted, and basically it took the fire and ran,' he said.
By early Tuesday, the fire had grown to about 28,600 acres, according to Central Oregon Fire Info, an interagency dispatch service. Firefighters and other crews, including from the Bureau of Land Management and Oregon Department of Forestry, installed containment lines and used air support from tankers and helicopters to cool hot spots, the service said.
But despite those efforts, shifting winds propelled the fire over bulldozer lines that had been cut into the ground to prevent the spread of flames, Mr. Zoutendijk said.
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