High temperatures, strong winds and lightning storms have sparked dozens of new fires in Oregon these past few days, particularly in Central and southeastern Oregon.
And a national firefighter labor shortage is making it harder to suppress massive wildfires across the West, with fewer federal teams that Oregon can ask for help.
State fire officials say crews are running out of steam and resources.
“We have men and women fighting fire in the poison oak,” Oregon Department of Forestry fire division chief Chris Cline said at a press conference Monday. “They need to get clean. There are no showers, there’s no food.”
State and federal fire agencies usually help each other fight fires. But Cline said all federal fire teams are busy fighting fires across the West.
“There are no incident management teams available in the United States of America today, right now,” Cline said.
FILE - A wildfire outside Ukiah in Umatilla County becomes part of the Battle Mountain Complex of fires that have burned more than 183,000 acres and destroyed seven homes and 10 other structures.
Courtesy of Northwest Interagency Coordination Center
U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman said with so many large wildfires burning in several parts of the country — including California and the Rockies — the agency would be stretched thin regardless of a firefighter labor shortage.
“There are a finite number of resources and with this much activity, we are always going to be short of firefighters,” Freeman said.
The U.S. Forest Service has recently struggled with hiring and keeping firefighters, a ProPublica investigation found earlier this year. In Oregon, state officials say they were able to hire enough firefighters for the 2024 season, but they worry about the coming weeks.
“A lot of our firefighters are college students who are usually in college for a forestry degree and this is their summer job,” agency spokesperson Jessica Neujahr said. “Once school starts back up, we lose a significant portion of our workforce.”
In addition to state-owned land, the Oregon Department of Forestry protects private property belonging to landowners who pay rates for its firefighting services. For that reason, it usually attacks small fires aggressively to keep at least 98% of them from growing past 10 acres. But this year, the agency has only been able to keep 93% smaller than 10 acres.
“There’s just not enough people to answer each fire appropriately with that same aggressive initial attack,” Neujahr said.
Much of Oregon will get a reprieve, with some cooler temperatures and potential rain starting Wednesday. Even so, fire officials say it’s not enough to end the fire season, so Oregonians should remain vigilant through September and October.
The 2024 fire season has been a record-breaker for Oregon, with 1.8 million acres burned so far, mostly affecting rural areas and rangelands in Central and Eastern Oregon. These dry lands are naturally prone to recurring wildfires, but ecologists say climate change is making wildfires bigger and more destructive.
While fewer acres burned during the 2020 Labor Day weekend fires, that remains one of the most destructive fire seasons in the state’s history, when thousands of homes burned.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the total number of acres burned in Oregon so far this year. It’s 1.8 million. OPB regrets the error.