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CNN Live Today

Black Butte Ranch Partially Evacuated

Aired July 29, 2002 - 10:34   ET

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

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: About a half million acres of forests are on fire right now, mostly in the West. Many of the worst are in Oregon.
That is where we find David Okarski of our affiliate KOIN. He joins us this morning from Bend, Oregon -- hello.

DAVID OKARSKI, KOIN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Leon. The Cache Mountain fire started spotted inside the Black Butte Ranch yesterday afternoon. Those spot fires combined around 3:30 in the afternoon, and shortly thereafter, the Deschutes County sheriff ordered an evacuation of the ranch. Two homes in the golf section of the ranch were destroyed. The Black Butte Ranch is a private resort community with about 1,300 homes in it. We could see the smoke 70 miles away as we drove down yesterday evening from The Dalles, Oregon where we were reporting on the Sheldon Ridge fire. Fourteen people stayed here at the Red Cross shelter, where I am now, in Bend last night. Among them, a Portland family with a vacation home at the Black Butte Ranch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were a little bit worried how late in the day it was. We were pretty tired, and thought might not be very safe to make it home tonight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Also we were going to do it for the experience as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of exciting for the kids, but we are also hoping that the fire will be contained and we might be able to go back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OKARSKI: And we don't know at this time exactly how soon they will be able to go back. That family also, by the way, is entertaining friends from Wales who also stayed at the shelter last night.

We still don't know exactly how many people actually evacuated. It could have been more than 5,000, it could have been fewer than 3,000. The reason we don't know is that many of the homes in that Black Butte Ranch community are vacation homes, and it's impossible to tell exactly how many people were actually vacationing there yesterday when the evacuation order was given. We do know that there are a lot of people staying in hotels here in Bend, or in Sisters, which is a little closer to the Black Butte Ranch. There are 14 people here at the Red Cross shelter, and last night the roads between eastern Oregon and the west side of the Cascades, Eugene, Salem, and so forth, were packed with people in cars, trailers, boats, and so forth. So many people may simply have gone home -- Leon.

HARRIS: That's amazing. David, and we've been covering for the last couple of weeks or so now these huge numbers of fires that have been plaguing that area out there. Is there any chance at all, or any concern at all that these fires may actually continue and actually may join up at some particular point out there?

OKARSKI: There are a lot of fires here. I don't think that the Cache Mountain fire is very close right now to any of the other major complexes. But there are fires all over the place, and it's always a danger that they could get together. This fire was developed and damaged the houses because some of the spot fires within -- that occurred yesterday afternoon within the Black Butte Ranch did get together. The spot fires alone would have been OK, but they merged. Things just happened very fast. It's so terribly dry out here now.

HARRIS: All right. We sure wish you folks luck out there. David Okarski of KOIN. Thanks much. Be careful out there.

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