Back to the future: COVID-19, fires, smoke recall summer of 2020 (NOT SOON)
Published 2:55 am Thursday, July 29, 2021
(IN PROGRESS)
First came the rapidly spreading deadly virus. Hot days created a record-breaking fires. Acrid smoke spread from the Pacific to Pendleton.
As Oregon Summer 2021 comes to an end, it feels like a rerun of the highly unpopular horror classic, Oregon Summer 2020.
Optimistic twists on old sayings gleefully said “Hindsight is 2020,” has turned into the rueful wordplay that 2021 is actually spelled as “2020 Won.”
There were difference, of course.
COVID-19 was new in 2020 and the only tools to fight it were staying away from other people.
In 2021, vaccines were available to all adults who wanted them.
But a lot did not and when the delta variant tore through Oregon in late July, the numbers of infections and deaths outstripped 2020.
A declaration of fire season signals the worst of the worst part of the year. Drought had already burned about 5,000 acres before the 2020 season officially began on July 5.
Fires burned, as they did almost every summer. 79,732 in 2019, nearly 898,000 in 2018, and just under 763,000 in 2017 and just over 300,000 acres in 2016
Lightning had ignited the Long Draw Fire in 2012 burned 550,000 acres near Basque. Same with the Biscuit Fire in 2002. Bandon had burned in 1936 in its namesake fire that scorched 287,000 acres
Then the state exploded over Labor Day weekend with wind-whipped blazes roaring down canyons, incinerating small towns on the west side of the Cascades before bursting into the backyards of the Willamette Valley.
The final tally counted 2,215 fires would burn just under 1.142 million (deaths, money)
Statesman Journal:
From 2015 to 2019, which included major wildfire years, Oregon lost a combined 93 homes, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.
This year, 4,009 homes burned down.
The largest wildfires in state history are actually believed to have taken place in the 1800s. The Silverton Fire of 1865 is listed as Oregon’s largest at over 900,000 acres. A number of other fires apparently reached 400,000 to 800,000 acres in those early days, though accurate mapping is questionable.
The era of giant fires started coming to an end with the creation of the Forest Service and Oregon Department of Forestry, which brought almost a century of aggressive suppression.
But putting out every fire led to a buildup of fuels in the forest that, combined with rising temperatures, led to the return of megafires in Oregon beginning with the 2002 Biscuit (500,000 acres) in Southern Oregon and B&B Complex (90,000 acres) on Santiam Pass.
In the decade before Biscuit and B&B — from 1992 to 2001 — Oregon wildfires burned an average of 198,000 acres per year, according to the NWCC. In the years between 2002 and 2017, that number jumped to an average of 433,541 acres burned each year.
From 2012 to 2020, the average jumps to 650,000 acres burned per year.
And the fires have become increasingly dangerous. While Oregon was sparsely populated back in the 1800s, the situation has changed, with Oregon’s fast-growing population pushing into the wildland urban interface.
Oregon had a number of very close calls in the past five years. The Chetco Bar Fire in 2017 came within a few miles and a shift in the weather of burning into Brookings, with a population of almost 8,000 people. The Eagle Creek Fire, also in 2017, trapped 150 hikers and shut down I-84 while threatening Cascade Locks.
Numerous large fires ignited and burned for weeks in Southern Oregon in 2018, but with a big wind event, it could have been far worse.
The Bootleg Fire started on July 6 and at one point grew at a rate of 1,000 acres per horu. would burn 414,000 acres before contained Aug. 21
The fire contributed to haze across the United States and vivid red sunrises and sunsets as far away as Boston and New York City.[15][16] Heat and smoke from the Bootleg Fire generated pyrocumulus and pyrocumulonimbus clouds, some reaching as high as 45,000 feet (14,000 m) and bringing lightning strikes and precipitation.[3][17] There were reports of small fire whirls, and officials believed that at least one actual fire tornado formed in the southeastern portion of the fire on July 18.[17][18]
161 houses and 247 outbuildings
Near Beatty in Klamath County
In the past, Oregon’s largest wildfires stayed mostly in remote forest or grassland. In 2012, for example, 1.2 million acres burned in Oregon — the most in state history. But the large number was fueled by giant grass fires in remote parts of the state where few people live.
The state took no chances and fire season was declared on May 13 – the earliest in four decades.
National Interagency Fire Center:
Currently, 77 large fires and complexes have burned nearly 3.2 million acres. Active fire behavior was reported on large fires in California, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Oklahoma. Seven large incidents in California and two in Oregon have evacuation orders in place for residents near the fires.
As we start of day 65 of National Preparedness Level 5, we thank more than 18,500 wildland fire personnel assigned to incidents across the country. Our federal, state, Tribal, and local firefighters are joined by crews from Canada, U.S. Army Soldiers, and aviation resources from the National Guard and Australia. We appreciate their hard work and dedication to the work they do to protect our public lands.
Cougar Peak burned 88,000 acres in Lake County
Big Meadow in Harney County, Middle Fork near Oakridge
Green Ridge, just north of the Columbia River near Pendleton
he 2021 season has been outpacing the destructive previous season, with nearly 10 times as many acres having burned as of July 20 compared to the previous year through that date, according to the NIFC‘s Northwest Coordination Center.[3]
Thursday, September 9 in honor of U.S. Forest Service contract firefighter Frumencio Ruiz Carapia, who was killed on August 23 after he was struck by a falling tree while working to contain the Gales Fire in Lane County.
Oregon declared the earliest start to the wildfire season in more than 40 years, experts say that large-scale blazes are breaking out earlier than ever. Compared to past summers, the year-to-date numbers for 2021 make clear just how unusual this is.
over the course of July. As the virus raged, fires tore through Oregon, scorching hundreds of thousands of a
First there was the inexorably rising virus, cases doubling between the end of June and beginning of August.
Then came the fires, scorching hundreds of thousands of acres
Finally, the smoke that blanketed the state and far beyond
New cases in 2020 from 7-day average of 186 on June 30 to 332 on July 30.
183 to 505 seven day average.
Heat Wave:
On June 26, Portland broke its previous all-time record high temperature of 107 °F (42 °C), set in July 1965 and August 1981, with a temperature of 108 °F (42 °C).[122] It topped that record again on June 27, with a temperature of 112 °F (44 °C).[123] The following day, the temperature increased further to 116 °F (47 °C).[62][124] These extremes also beat the previous record June temperature, 102 °F (39 °C) set on June 26, 2006.[61]
Salem, Oregon, reached 105 °F (41 °C) degrees on June 26, its record high temperature for June. It then hit 113 °F (45 °C) degrees on June 27, breaking the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in that city, which was previously 108 °F (42 °C). Salem then exceeded the previous day’s record temperature on June 28, with a maximum temperature of 117 °F (47 °C).[125] However, not all the regions of the mid-Willamette Valley experienced extreme heat on June 28. Regions south of Salem, for example, had not seen highs above mid-90s Fahrenheit on that day, likely due to cooler ocean air in the area.[126]
The Willamette Valley also experienced extreme overnight temperature drops (twice the size of normal fluctuations) due to cooler air coming from the ocean – Portland cooled a record 52 °F (29 °C) during the night, while Salem almost approached its all-time largest temperature swing, from 117 °F (47 °C) to 61 °F (16 °C).[127]
