The Pulp Road Fire in Brunswick County reached 3,500 acres today and was still at zero percent containment. The 15,000-acre preserve where it’s burning crosses Brunswick and Columbus counties and is designated a National Natural Landmark. According to the N.C. Forest Service, the area was cleared of unburned fuels outside the fire perimeter, and crews had mopped up spot fires.
The N.C. Forest Service — one of several state forestry agencies in the U.S. that are named “Forest Service” — has mobilized its Red Incident Management Team to take over the fire. Resources earlier today included multiple engine and tractor plow strike teams plus aircraft. The PortCityDaily out of Wilmington reported that personnel will staff the fire through the weekend.
The state DEQ raised air pollution alerts to red in Brunswick County and orange in both New Hanover and Pender counties.
According to the Wilmington Star News, the fire initially was lit as a controlled burn in the Green Swamp Game Land and Green Swamp Nature Preserve, but yesterday the fire burned out of control and was classified as a wildfire. It nearly doubled in size since Thursday night. Smoke is thick in some areas and it is affecting visibility; officials have urged drivers to use caution.
State and local officials urged residents with respiratory issues to remain indoors.
Air quality in the upper Mississippi River Valley, tainted Thursday by north winds blowing in smoke from Canadian wildfires, worsened from moderately affected in the morning to just plain unhealthy by afternoon. By 6:30 p.m. the Air Quality Index (AQI) was rated at Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.
Midwest smoke map 06/15/2023
According to the National Weather Service (NWS) and AirNow.gov, smoke from fires burning in Ontario — north of Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois — is forecast to cause a mix of air quality conditions into at least Saturday.
As of 4 p.m. Thursday, the AQI for northwest Illinois and eastern Iowa showed pollutants hovering between the conditions of unhealthy for those sensitive to pollution and unhealthy for anyone in the population. The Sterling Daily Gazette reported that sensitive groups include people with respiratory conditions or heart or lung disease — as well as children, teens, and seniors.
Those at risk are advised to stay indoors or at least shorten the time they are active outdoors.
AirNow.gov air quality index and smoke drift map 06/15/2023AirNow.gov air quality index and smoke drift map
The New York Times reported that smoke from Canada fires is returning to smoke-weary residents of New York; it’s expected to be heaviest on Friday morning, but forecasters said the region would be spared the orange haze that settled last week, when a thick plume of smoke choked the air in New York City, delaying flights, closing schools, and sending people to hospitals with respiratory issues. The NWS said smoke had temporarily settled in the Upper Midwest, causing unhealthy levels in much of Minnesota, including the Twin Cities.
Accu-Weather reports said Canadian smoke is now settling across the Midwest; it had started to drift over Minnesota and the Dakotas earlier in the week, and by Thursday morning, wind had carried high-altitude smoke as far south as Oklahoma and east to Pennsylvania and New York. The worst smoke stretched from southern Minnesota to central Ohio, and emergency room physicians and nurses cautioned those at risk to stay indoors if possible.
“With the air quality at its current levels, we are beginning to see a slight increase in emergency rooms visits for patients suffering from respiratory issues,” said Sarah Alvarez-Brown, director of Emergency Services and Behavioral Health at CGH Medical Center in Sterling, Illinois. “On average, 20 percent of emergency visits involve respiratory issues and difficulty breathing, but over the last couple of days, we have seen this jump to 30 or 40 percent of visits. No matter your age — from infants to older adults — if you have a pre-existing respiratory condition, asthma, heart or lung disease, or you are sensitive to changes in air quality, you may want to limit your time outside or stay indoors, in an air-conditioned or air-purified environment, until the smoke and haze pass.”
Check AirNow.gov for updates; the maps are interactive and can be zoomed or changed by zip code. Air quality levels are updated hourly.
The FederalNewsNetwork is reporting that several federal agencies have been hit with cyber intrusions by a zero-day vulnerability in a popular file transfer service, and Department of Energy organizations are among the victims.
UPDATE 06/16: The global data breach exposed the personal information of millions of Oregonians who have a DMV-issued identification card. Airlines, banks, universities, foreign governments, and other state-level agencies were also compromised by the attack. Those compromises include a government-managed radioactive waste storage site, and the victim count outside of government agencies was about 50 as of late yesterday. KPTV News reported that the Oregon DMV was made aware of the breach on June 1. The Oregon DOT announced yesterday that personal information of about 3.5 million residents may have been compromised; ODOT was alerted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that a popular file transfer tool called MOVEit could allow unauthorized access to its user systems. Around a dozen other U.S. agencies have active MOVEit contracts, according to the Federal Data Procurement System. TechCrunch reported that this includes the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Multiple sources confirmed that Oak Ridge Associated Universities and Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico experienced data breaches caused by the MOVEit vulnerability. It was unknown whether the incident affected any internal Energy Department-run systems, but it had impacted agency data at those locations.
Multiple U.S. agencies have been compromised by attackers who had exploited flaws in popular software tool MOVEit and had collected information from a range of victims. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Thursday that several federal agencies were affected but which agencies was not yet clear. CLoP‘s Russian-speaking hackers have managed recent attacks exploiting MOVEit.
The breach compromised the personally identifiable information of potentially tens of thousands of individuals, including DOE employees and contractors, and DOE officials took immediate steps to prevent further exposure. Other agencies will also likely be affected by the breach because MOVEit is a popular transfer software.
“This software is embedded in a lot of systems, and there could be a long tail on this one,” one source said. “There’s probably stuff out there you just don’t know about yet.” The government of Nova Scotia and the University of Rochester were the first victims to be identified in North America while organizations such as Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom, the BBC, British Airways, and Irish carrier Aer Lingus have disclosed data theft.
Minnesota’s Department of Education announced a wide-ranging breach involving the data of hundreds of thousands of students.
TheRecord reported that security company Censys said they examined organizations exposed to the internet who use MOVEit Transfer and found that 31 percent of the hosts running MOVEit are in the financial services industry, 16 percent in healthcare, 9 percent in information technology, and 8 percent in government and military.
Missouri’s Office of Administration, Information Services and Technology Division (OA-ITSD) said on Tuesday it is investigating what was taken by hackers during a cyberattack on the MOVEit system they use to transfer files and information between agencies. State agencies in Illinois also said they are investigating.
A jury in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland, Oregon decided yesterday that the state’s second-largest electric utility PacifiCorp — which owns Pacific Power — must pay punitive damages for causing the horrific Labor Day wildfires in 2020 — in addition to the earlier verdict in a class-action suit for negligence. It’s expected to amount to billions of dollars. The jury on Monday awarded $73 million to 17 homeowners named as plaintiffs in the case, with damages for a broader class involving the owners of nearly 2,500 properties burned in the fires.
Beachie Creek Fire Sept. 2 2020 — Inciweb photo
PacifiCorp, owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, said it would appeal, according to a report published by KEZI-TV News.
The jury determined yesterday that punitive damages were warranted because of the utility’s indifference to the safety of others — and to deter such conduct in the future. The 2020 fires were among the worst natural disasters in Oregon’s history, and burned more acres than had been burned in the previous 36 years combined.
September 9 update from Brian Gales’ NWIMT13 after the Beachie Creek ICP was overrun by fire. Originally listed at 469 acres, the fire grew overnight to 131,000 acres.Beachie Creek Fire
The fires roared down canyons in western Oregon, blown by east winds, hot temperatures, and other conditions perfect for autumn firestorms, killing nine people and burning more than 1,875 square miles (4,856 square kilometers), destroying upwards of 5,000 homes and other structures.
Plaintiffs alleged that PacifiCorp negligently failed to shut off power to its 600,000 customers during a severe windstorm, despite numerous warnings from top fire officials, which had prompted other utilities in the state to temporarily shut down power to prevent powerline-caused fires.
Utility crews in October 2020 — Inciweb photo
Doug Dixon, an attorney for the power company, told the jury that punitive damages were unwarranted. He claimed PacifiCorp was not indifferent to the threat of wildfire risk — despite testimony indicating otherwise during the trial. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars since the fires to upgrade equipment and expand weather stations and weather modeling. Dixon said the utility could face bankruptcy if punitive damages exceed its net worth of $10.7 billion.
The final verdict is posted on our DOCUMENTS page.
The FINAL VERDICT in the PacifiCorp trial
is now posted on our DOCUMENTS page.
The jury in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland found PacifiCorp liable for four of the devastating Labor Day 2020 fires that burned about 2,500 properties in western Oregon. The 12-person jury, according to a report by the Statesman Journal, determined that PacifiCorp (Pacific Power) was negligent for causing the Santiam, Echo Mountain, South Obenchain, and 242 fires after a 7-week class action trial. Pacific Power is Oregon’s second-largest utility.
One of the Labor Day fires in 2020 — from an exhibit during the trial
The jury found that PacifiCorp was negligent to an entire class in the Santiam Canyon, Lincoln City, and southern Oregon areas. Lawyers argued that PacifiCorp’s power lines ignited numerous wildfires that burned thousands of homes during an extreme high wind event on Labor Day night of 2020.
“The trial revealed that PacifiCorp tried to cover up and destroy evidence of powerline-ignited fires in the Santiam Canyon,” said Sam Drevo, one of the plaintiffs, “including electrical fires in firefighter camps in Gates and Mill City, overwhelming firefighters, causing chaos and more loss.”
“I was shocked by how little the company’s top people claimed to remember,” Drevo said, “how they tried to pass the buck, and by how much evidence they admittedly destroyed after knowing their equipment started fires. They took zero responsibility, and they said they would do ‘nothing differently’ next time.”
Drevo said the Santiam Canyon will never be the same. “But I hope this verdict will help in the long-term healing and recovery of what took many lifetimes to build. I ask the State Fire Marshal and State Police to look into whether criminal charges are warranted for the destruction of evidence.”
OPB reported that jurors returned a nearly unanimous verdict today. After less than two days of deliberations, jurors found the company owes more than $71 million to the 17 plaintiffs in the case for losses related to the fires and emotional suffering. The jury also applied its liability finding to a larger class, including the owners of nearly 2,500 properties damaged in the fires, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle. That determination could push the cost for damages to more than $1 billion.
The jury said PacifiCorp was at fault because the utility did not proactively shut down power, though several other utilities did, in the face of fire weather warnings, predicted high winds, and many reports and calls about arcing power lines and burning trees on power lines. The utility also failed to clear or maintain trees and other vegetation that its employees knew was a fire hazard.
From one of the exhibits at trial
PacificCorp argued that there was limited evidence its power lines caused the fires in question, but attorneys for the plaintiffs demonstrated that PacifiCorp employees in many cases had destroyed or hidden evidence, and utility employees had repeatedly trespassed onto the fire area — still under investigation — to remove or repair equipment despite repeated orders by the IC and other fire managers to stay clear of the closed area.
Ralph Bloemers, the director of Fire Safe Communities at Green Oregon, was among the first to report and document electrical fires in the Santiam Canyon in testimony to the Oregon Senate. He said fires driven by east winds in western Oregon are nothing new. These fires are a clear sign, though, that Oregon utilities need to prepare for wildfires in all areas of Oregon — whether a high or low fire frequency landscape, heavily populated or not.
“Western Oregon has a long history of wind-driven fire events, and these east wind fires can be very big, covering vast areas, burning where we haven’t seen fires in our lifetimes,” Bloemers said. “But big fires are part of these landscapes, and are now being amplified by extended drought and increased wind as the climate changes.”
Because the jury found PacifiCorp negligent to entire classes, a second phase of the trial will allow people affected by the fires to claim damages, even if they were not involved as plaintiffs in this first phase.
OPB reported that Bob Jenks with the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, which represents the interests of ratepayers, said the utility could not reasonably pass on the costs from Monday’s verdict to its customers because the jury found the company was grossly negligent. He said it may be possible that customers will have to pay more in the future if PacifiCorp decides to spend more money on tree trimming and other wildfire mitigation efforts.
Still, he said, the verdict was a clear message.
“To me, this was a pretty harsh verdict against PacifiCorp,” Jenks said. “It’s clearly sending the message to companies that you can be held liable.”
Investigators have still not, more than two years later, completed final investigations into the causes of those historic 2020 fires.
Firefighters from several cities, towns, and metro areas in western Oregon headed to the woods last week to learn wildland firefighting skills so they can step in and help out when wildfire season kicks in this year.
About 25 agencies sent 125 firefighters to the 12th annual Metro Advanced Wildland School, which trains structural firefighters in wildland firefighting, according to a report by KPIC.com — and that report noted that for some, talking to a pilot in a helicopter is almost like learning a different language.
Keizer Fire District engine
“We’re not typically used to doing that, outside of a medical evac,” said Rachel Brozovich, a Keiser Fire District captain. “We come from different backgrounds, so we have to have a common terminology. So that’s what we’re working on today is that common terminology and really clear communication.” She said communication is important with a water drop because water from the bucket falls with a force of eight pounds per gallon, so a 100-gallon bucket of water could hit firefighters with 800 pounds of force, enough to injure or even kill them.
And that would be one of the smaller buckets; larger buckets carry 1,000 gallons.
The training for these structural firefighters takes place on private property.
KGW-8 News reported that firefighters from a couple dozen different agencies met in Molalla, Oregon, on Friday, June 9 as part of a two-day Advanced Wildland School. “It’s one thing to talk about fire, it’s a whole different thing when you’re faced with it,” said Philomath Fire & Rescue Deputy Fire Chief Rich Saalsaa.
He said that’s just one reason that firefighters from the Willamette Valley and Portland metro areas met for training at the annual Metro Advanced Wildland School (MAWS). Techniques students practiced included use of hand tools, radio communications with a helicopter doing water drops, triaging homes, and extinguishing live fire. “Out in the wildland, out in a forest, if we don’t have ready water sources there, it’s you and your shovel and your axe, and be able to basically cut a line to stop the forward progress,” Saalsaa added.
He said the training will help crews not only on wildland fires but back at home as well. “We used to be deployed on four-day and seven-day conflagrations. Now, they’re 14 and 28 days. The Bootleg Fire was one of the largest we’ve had in the state of Oregon, that’s unfortunately becoming the norm now rather than the exception,” explained Saalsaa. He said the students at this training event are about 50-50 volunteers and career firefighters.
Multiple U.S. agencies have been compromised by attackers who had exploited flaws in popular software tool MOVEit and had collected information from a range of victims. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Thursday that several federal agencies were affected but which agencies was not yet clear. 
