OUR VIEW: Commissioner Roberts needs to stick to facts

Published 10:30 am Thursday, March 9, 2023

Jackson County Commissioner Colleen Roberts owes a lot of firefighters an apology — thousands of them, in fact — especially the ones who put their lives on the line last summer to battle the Rum Creek Fire near Galice. 

Jackson County commissioners announced a plan Tuesday to solicit community input in an effort to amend federal wildland fire policy. The commissioners agreed to solicit letters from businesses, nonprofits and other entities, asking letter writers to share experiences and talk about the “adverse effects from catastrophic wildfire smoke.” 

All of that is good. Wildfire is an existential threat for Southern Oregon, where megafires and choking smoke were a regular occurrence even before the Almeda and South Obenchain fires burned more than 2,500 homes and businesses and opened our eyes to what’s at stake when wildfire enters populated areas.

We need discussions about wildfire, and the more people who participate, the better.

But the discussion needs to be based in fact, and that’s where Roberts went off the rails.

“When a fire goes on the landscape, there is this overarching policy that allows them to burn,” Roberts said in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting. “I think that it happened a little in the Rum Creek Fire. They put a 5,000-acre box around an 800-acre fire. The next day, it was a 10,000-acre fire.”

There are so many factual errors in that four-sentence statement that it will take a while to parse them out.

A little context is required. The Rum Creek Fire was one of more than 70 wildfires sparked Aug. 17, 2022, by a huge storm that punished the mountains of Southern Oregon.

Local firefighting agencies jumped on those fires with both feet. The Oregon Department of Forestry knocked down 55, and the U.S. Forest Service quelled 14 more using smokejumpers, helicopters, hotshot crews and other assets. They put out all of the fires except Rum Creek — which, despite burning on ground so steep it was unsafe to stand, didn’t stop crews from going after it.

On Aug. 18, the day after the fire started, Logan Taylor, a 25-year-old firefighter from Talent, was struck by a falling tree and killed. That does not sound like fire crews were taking a passive approach. 

On the day Taylor was killed, the Rum Creek Fire was around 100 acres. Five days later, on Aug. 23, the fire was still just 360 acres, and it was being fought directly by 266 people, including 10 hand crews, a Hotshot crew and a dozer team. But it was stubborn and the work was extremely dangerous, as fire teams reported burning debris rolling down the nearly vertical slopes.

On Aug. 24, the fire had burned down to the Rogue River and was up to 779 acres. The next day, eight days after it started, it was 959 acres. Crews were digging firelines to protect Merlin, Galice and Grants Pass. Crews were installing sprinklers around businesses and houses in Galice and wrapping the historic Whiskey Creek Cabin, across the river from where the fire was burning.

Then the winds hit.

“Late Friday afternoon (Aug. 26), strong valley winds and hot temperatures fanned the fire near Grave Creek, increasing fire activity and throwing sparks out of the established perimeter to both sides of the river, which created spot fires that began making fast uphill runs. The increased intensity of the fire formed a pyrocumulus smoke column, which then collapsed, pushing the fire to the south and east,” according to an update issued by firefighters. 

That’s the first time the fire topped 1,000 acres, and three days later, on Aug. 29 — a full 12 days after the lightning struck — the fire blew up to 10,000 acres.

On Aug. 31, the Rum Creek Fire was declared Oregon’s highest priority blaze, which brought so many structural firefighters from around the state and region that the area was essentially the largest fire department in the state, according to the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Those are all facts, easily uncovered, and Roberts should have known them before accusing firefighters of putting “a 5,000-acre box around an 800-acre fire” and letting it burn.

By all means, let’s have a robust discussion about federal wildfire policy. But let’s bring facts to the discussion and leave the political grandstanding out in the hall.

Correction: This editorial has been changed to clarify that Roberts’ statements about the Rum Creek Fire were made in an interview following the county commission meeting.