Oregon fire season already ‘feels like July’ as firefighters battle growing Rowena blaze

The

wildfire

tearing through hillsides near

Rowena

erupted with

startling speed Wednesday

, driven by winds that pushed flames toward neighborhoods and forced hundreds of residents to evacuate.

Officials were still scrambling to assess the damage by Thursday afternoon and warning that Oregon’s fire season is arriving far earlier than normal.

“It feels like July,” Travis Medema, chief deputy state fire marshal, said at a Thursday afternoon press conference at Mayers State Park, west of The Dalles. “We’re about a month ahead of schedule.”

The fire ignited around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in Wasco County, and grew from 50 acres to roughly 3,500 acres within 24 hours. Winds as strong as 30 mph helped fuel the fast spread, driving flames into neighborhoods near The Dalles and forcing fire crews to leapfrog house to house to protect homes.

About 180 people were deployed battling the fire Thursday, a day after Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act that allowed the state to deploy firefighting resources from across Oregon to help the local crews already on the ground. The number of people on the fire is expected to grow by about 100 by Friday, officials said.

Some homes along U.S. 30 have been destroyed in the fire, but the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office declined to provide firm numbers, saying it will take a long time to assess the full scope of the damage. But Kotek’s office said in a statement about her invocation of the conflagration act that “structure loss is expected to be significant.”

Rowena residents Austin Wilson and Chelsea Wooderson lost the manufactured home they were living in with their family — including a 10-year-old Dachshund, Howie — to the fire, the couple said Thursday as they picked up household items at the Red Cross shelter in The Dalles.

They were both at work Wednesday when they learned the fire was encroaching on their neighborhood. Wooderson tried to get past a barricade to get her dog but couldn’t get through, so she called Wilson, who managed to get to the home using a different route.

Wilson said the air was thick with smoke as he approached and there were flames on both sides of the road. The wildfire sounded like a “thunderstorm,” he said. Their dog was hiding under a bed. Wilson grabbed Howie, a few stuffed toys for his son and daughter — who were safe elsewhere — and left. The couple came back Thursday morning to see how bad the damage was, and found the home burnt down to the metal frame.

The couple had yet to figure out where they were going to stay Thursday night.

They weren’t the only ones. Multiple properties along U.S. 30 in Rowena had been overrun by the fire, leaving behind charred cars, the twisted remains of metal roofs and patches of ground smoldering or still on fire.

Tankers and helicopters were constantly flying back and forth, picking up water from the Columbia River and dumping it on the fire over the ridge. A short stretch of the gorge between The Dalles and Rowena was enveloped in wildfire smoke with some flames visible Thursday.

Medema and others warned that the unseasonably dry, volatile conditions resemble late July or even August — weeks ahead of where Oregon normally sits this time of year. Last year, Oregon saw nearly 2 million acres burn in one of the

worst wildfire seasons

in recent memory.

“We knew we were headed into a tough fire season,” said Kyle Williams, deputy director at the Oregon Department of Forestry. “We really hoped that we would have a little bit more time before we kicked it off in earnest.”

Crews made some progress overnight, building dozer lines around portions of the fire’s southern edge and trying to use old roads and air tankers to block further spread. But officials said much of the fire’s western flank remains uncontrolled, with crews still working to establish containment lines.

The Wasco County Sheriff’s Office has issued varying levels of evacuation for about 3,800 residences affecting 3,035 people. The highest evacuation level — Level 3 (go now) — was in effect for 825 homes as of Thursday afternoon, the sheriff said.

No fatalities have been reported, though officials urged anyone unable to reach a loved one to call a designated message line, at 541-506-2724.

The fire was most likely caused by “human activity of some kind,” Williams said, but the precise cause is still under investigation.

Meantime, officials have

closed nearby state parks

, including Mayer State Park and the Rowena Crest Viewpoint. They have also evacuated Cottonwood Canyon State Park because of the Ferry fire burning outside Wasco, about 42 miles to the east.

The Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum

remains intact

despite its proximity to the Rowena fire.

“As the day’s gone on, I’ve heard more information that makes me think that the area around it is as secure as it can be when there’s a fire raging,” Cheryl Ragar, executive director of the museum said.

— Fedor Zarkhin is a breaking news and enterprise reporter. Do you have a story? Reach him by phone or text at 971-373-2905 or by email at


fzarkhin@oregonian.com


.

Wildfires

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