Columbia Fire & Rescue Operations Division Chief Eric Smythe\n says that grass fires and brush fires usually start in May or June, but\n in the past few years that initial fire date has been steadily moving \nup the calendar. Last year, the first recorded brush fire in Oregon was \non April 1. This year, it was March 17. Smythe thinks Oregon is in for \u201ca long fire season.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The effects of climate change \u2013 lower \nrates of precipitation, shrinking winter snowpack and increasingly hot \nand arid summers \u2013 serve as both tinder and match for worsening fire seasons in the western U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Monday March 18, the day after the \nyear\u2019s first recorded brush fire, Columbia Fire & Rescue responded \nto five more fires, three of them brush fires, within 12 hours. The next\n day, Tuesday, a 200 acre wildfire broke out along\n the Linn-Marion County divide in Santiam Park near Lyons, Oregon, \ncausing the evacuation of 42 homes on either side of the county line and\n drawing in over 100 firefighting personnel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Friday evening, the fire was still smoldering but fully contained.\n No structures were damaged, and local officials reduced the level of \nthe fire warning, allowing evacuated residents to return to their homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smythe and other officials worry if this is a sign of an even more intense fire season than Oregon saw last year. They are hoping for steady levels of precipitation to keep moisture on the fine materials and twigs\n that can dry out, ignite, and spark much larger fires. However, the \nNorthwest Interagency Coordination Center, a coordination center for \nfederal and state agencies working on \nwildland fire management, reported that the Pacific Northwest as a whole\n received below-average precipitation this past month. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Columbia Fire & Rescue Operations Division Chief Eric Smythe says that grass fires and brush fires usually start in May or June, but in the past few years that initial fire date has been steadily moving up the calendar. Last year, the first recorded brush fire in Oregon was on April 1. This year, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7599,45,7595],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1954,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions\/1954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schultzwebdesign.se\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}