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CNN Live Today

Crews Battle Oregon's Largest Wildfire

Aired July 15, 2002 - 10:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: It has been a record wildfire season across the United States. We’ve got an update on the fire lines in Oregon. The crews there say they have no idea when they will be able to reign in the state's largest wildfire, burning outside the town of Madras. The blaze has already destroyed at least 18 homes and many, many more lie in its potential path.

For the latest, let's turn to Ryan Deal of KPTV/KPOX who is out there -- Ryan.

RYAN DEAL, KPTV/KPOX REPORTER: Carol, good morning.

We are live in Madras, and the fire is about 45 minutes off in this direction, and if you look beyond the hills here, you can see the smoke is just beginning to come over. The fire typically lays down at night and then rises up again in the morning.

Right now, the fire is about 30 percent contained. Seventeen thousand acres have burned and, by Oregon standards that is pretty big. There is some talk here that perhaps the many tribes on the Indian reservation here may have delayed a little bit in calling authorities for extra help. Those authorities came in Thursday of last week. The fire began burning Monday.

Again, 17,000 acres right now as you mentioned, 18 homes destroyed, 17 of those in the Three Springs subdivision here, and about 260-some-odd homes remain untouched by flames. We hope that continues to be the case today. In some of the cases, the homes burned because firefighters actually had to back off as propane tanks and other items, flammable items, were exploding. We have videotape of some of those explosions.

Some of the people in those evacuated homes, however, could be let back into their homes as early as today. Roadblocks are going to be pushed back. Those people might be coming back in. It looks like the danger might be over for those homeowners as of right now but that could change.

There are two major concerns people are looking at this morning, one of those being wind. The wind has been very high here the last two or three days. It’s caused embers to jump fire lines and that's caused of course the fire to expand. Another thing, and perhaps more important, lightning strikes, dry lightning strikes, those lightning strikes have added fuel to an already burning fire and we have one report of another fire being spawned overnight. And now a 50-acre fire, not far from here because of one of those lightning strikes.

Carol, one thing today, they’re going to be doing is bringing in infrared cameras it look for hot spots. Those hot spots are of major importance. They burn very hot and firefighters have to get those knocked down as soon as they can, and if we see hot spots today, we’ll see large plumes of smoke coming over the mountainside here and we’re told those plumes of smoke could be coming as early as 11:00 our time, that would be two o’clock East Coast time. Carol, let’s send it back to you.

LIN: All right, thank you very much, Ryan Deal. Of course the danger increases as the day heats up out there, so stay safe and keep an eye out for us.

DEAL: Thank you.

LIN: Ryan Deal, reporting live from Madras, Oregon.

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