Sour Biscuit fire
Even though there were many wild fires while I grew up In
Oregon, and since I have returned, I have little direct experience with fire.
In 2008 or 2009 the logging unit I was working on near Selma Oregon burnt, but
I was here in Bend when it happened. I was amazed to see the changes when I
returned to work what had been thick Douglas-fir stands with thick underbrush
was a black barren wasteland with charred snags and burn logs. I couldn’t help
being glad I wouldn’t be dragging chokers and saws through the thick underbrush
that provided the fuel for such a devastating fire. Abundant ladder fuels dried
by drought conditions and the hot weather common in southern Oregon combined
with a little lightening completely wiped out all the usable timber on our
unit. I am not sure if the fire was this bad elsewhere but we were on a south
west facing slope, the underbrush was dry and our slash piles of limbs and tops
were drying pretty quick as well. The only salvageable trees where in a ring
around our equipment, and the only reason those still stood was the fire crews.
In a successful attempt to save our equipment a crew dug a fire line around our
cats and saws while a helicopter dumped buckets on our stuff. It took three
days to salvage what we could and clear the equipment. It took two weeks to get
all the soot and ash off my body and out of my nose weeks to.
So that is the extent of my experience with wild fire. What
I learned, firefighters are awesome and don’t leave your saw in the brush.
Unfortunately my saw was the only thing lost. A tree fell on it.
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