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American Morning
Firefighters Battling Two Ferocious Fires on California-Oregon Border
Aired August 01, 2002 - 09:07 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Firefighters are battling two ferocious fires on the California-Oregon border this morning. The 30-mile-long wall of flames is burning near Cave Junction, Oregon. That's where thousands of residents are now on alert. In fact, they have a 30- minute window of when they may have to evacuate. So far, nearly 200,000 acres have been torched.
Gary Tuchman joins us now live from Kerby, Oregon, and what their up against.
Good morning, Gary.
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, good morning to you.
Imagine living in the place where two monstrous fires are burning just few miles away from your door, and your told to turn on your cable TV to one of the local access channels, and there's a message on there. The message says, "keep watching this cable access channel, because at any time we're going to give you a 30-minute warning to get out of your house and take everything with you that you want, because the fires are coming so close." That is the situation here in the Illinois River Valley in southwestern Oregon.
Behind me two monstrous fires. One of the fires called the Florence Fire, named after creek in the area; 145,000 acres burning there. One mile south of that fire is the Sour Biscuit fire, so named because of creek there called the Biscuit Creek, 35,000 acres,a total of 180,000 acres. Eventually, it could grow to half a million acres. As you said, Paula, when the fires get together, and it is inevitable, and we'll tell you why in a minute, 30-mile long wall of flames, from southwestern Oregon into northern California.
The irony it started from a lightning strike on July 13th, and it's ironic, because there has been almost no rain here for several weeks, and that's the big problem, of course, that everything here is so dry.
With us right now is Mike Lori.
Mike is the incident commander for the U.S. Forest Service, in charge of things here. How is the situation right now? We see the smoke behind us, but the winds are very calm. That must be good news. MIKE LORI, U.S. FOREST SERVICE: We've had a good evening. We had a good day yesterday and good evening last night. We had good recovery, as far as humidity is concerned. The winds have been favorable for us. And we have had lower temperatures, which by all means decreased fire behavior and allows us to start our burnout operations, to seal this off.
TUCHMAN: OK, tell us about those burnout operations. Why are they done, and when will they being done?
LORI: They were started this morning early, as soon as we got conditions that would allow us to do that. They're being done to rob the fire of fuel, so that we don't have a flaming front pushing hard against the line that we've put in up there, and we'll basically seal off highway 199 and the Illinois River Valley from the fire itself. The fire will probably be burning until it rains in the fall, because there's so much real estate involved with it.
TUCHMAN: Until it rains in the fall.
LORI: Yes.
TUCHMAN: We're talking about a largely uninhabited area. That's good. Three or four structures have burned, but no one seriously hurt.
However, if the fires gets over these mountains that are behind us close to the highway we're standing next US 199, there's 17,000 people in this area. How dangerous could it be?
LORI: If this uncontrolled coming over the top of that, and we have a major push going through here, we need everybody out, and we need -- because it will it will create it's own whether phenomena, and race through the area, and could create havoc basically in general. However, by burning it out, we will be seeing fire right along near the front. But it will be under our conditions and under controlled manner, and that's the way we'll deal it with.
TUCHMAN: Mike, you're the expert. How optimistic or pessimistic are you about these blazes?
LORI: Well, I think that for a lot of the line, we have about a 90 percent chance of probability of success. But there are a couple of places where there's only about 50/50 chance, hence the warning for 30-minute evacuation. If we lose it there, or if we get a change in weather that to more erratic fire behavior kind of weather pattern, then we need to have people moving, and moving out to safety in a hurry.
TUCHMAN: Mike, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your time.
LORI: Thank you.
TUCHMAN: The U.S. government is saying these fires are the top firefighting priority in the nation right now, and that's pretty dramatic words, because this has been summer of so many fires in this nation.
Paula, back to you.
ZAHN: Gary, it's impossible to even imagine what that means, that these fires could be burning through the fall.
TUCHMAN: One thing, Paula, here in Oregon, this is brushfire and timber fire country. People are very used to these types of fires. But this, even by Oregon standards, is a huge blaze.
ZAHN: We wish all the residents out there great luck and delighted the winds have died down a little bit today.
Gary Tuchman, thanks so much for that report.
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