Tag: Oregon

Video journalist Andrew Satter visited a recently burned area in southwest Oregon with Brian Ballou, a Fire Prevention Specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry. Mr. Ballou explained how heat and drought are leading to larger and more expensive wildfires. The video was shot with Google Glass, the eyeglasses-like wearable computer. Some of the audio is not great, but it is a novel way to capture video.

(UPDATE at 4 p.m. PT, June 1, 2013)

Here is an update from the Oregon Department of Forestry:

Firefighters working overnight on the Beacon Hill Fire east of Grants Pass chased down and extinguished a handful of spotfires. The crews made progress on improving the fireline, burning out unburned fingers of fuel inside the fireline, and mopping up hot spots near to the fire’s edge. The size of the fire was revised upward to 115 acres.

Today [Saturday] approximately 50 firefighters will be working to contain and extinguish the wildfire. Four fire suppression crews, four engines and two water tenders have been assigned to the fire.

The 17-second video below shows a view of the fire from a helicopter, filmed Friday by Pacific Aviation NW, pilot Brett Hopper:

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(Originally published at 7:06 p.m. PT, May 31, 2013)

The Grants Pass Daily Courier has a live web cam pointed at a wildfire burning on Beacon Hill adjacent to the city along Interstate 5. (UPDATE: as of Saturday, June 1 the cam is no longer pointed at the fire.) Here is an excerpt from an article at the Oregon Department of Forestry’s web site:

A fast moving grass and brush fire broke out around 3:30 p.m. today near Interstate 5 east of Grants Pass. One home was damaged by the wildfire and an outbuilding burned. No injuries have been reported, and no evacuations have been called for.

The fire is burning through heavy brush and mixed forest on Beacon Hill. Steep terrain and continuous vegetation caused the fire to grow rapidly between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

Beacon Drive is closed to traffic, and one lane of the northbound lane of Interstate 5 is closed, but traffic is moving through. Jones Rd. is closed.

Approximately 100 wildland firefighters and 70 structural firefighters are working to contain the blaze and protect homes. Two helicopters are dropping bucketfuls of water on the fire, and two bulldozers are constructing fire line.

The web cam may be intermittent.

Contractors in Oregon who were awarded contracts for work in national forests hired foreign workers even though one of the goals of the federal stimulus funds was to decrease unemployment in the United States.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Oregonian:

In the Oregon case, contracts in the amount of $7 million were approved to clear and clean federal forests in central Oregon at a time when local unemployment was nearly 15 percent. Local officials said there where thousands of experienced workers were idle who could fill the need. When the contracts were announced in 2009, Oregon had the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation at 11.1 percent.

Even so, the contractors told federal regulators they could not find enough local workers for the jobs.

The federal investigation looked at 14 contracts to clear federal forests in central Oregon. The contracts were controlled by four Oregon companies: Medford Cutting Edge Forestry, Summitt Forestry, Ponderosa Reforestations, and G.E. Forestry. All hired foreign workers, according to the report, though they didn’t all handle hiring in the same way.

While legal, the hiring practices appear to violate the spirit and purpose of the $840 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus, which was designed to create jobs that would jumpstart the country out of recession.

The article does not say that any contract fire crews used foreign workers.

Members of the Oregon House of Representatives are scheduled to vote on House Bill 3315, which would require the Oregon Employment Department to report on any company performing “forest maintenance” work on federal lands that use foreign workers on temporary work visas instead of domestic workers.

 

Thanks go out to Kelly.