Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Are we being fire attacked tonight?

I never understood cedar shake roofs living fire and snow country. All my buildings had metal roofs. Every year had fires come through my area.

Thanks Ethan,

Nothing in our area of operations.............for now.

It's dry here, even this early in the AM it's only 18%. Going to be 86F today and I expect by then we'll be nearing single digit territory for moisture. Good thing, for the next couple of days little to no wind. I'll take those odds.

We're close to 200 miles from those fires in the Ashland OR area, a bit more than that from the Happy Camp one, and I think it's about 180 miles to the I5 corridor. Hopefully the firebugs don't bother to come here to the outback. They may have figured it that way, the East Side of the mountains, OR and CA still has a somewhat good appreciation of Frontier Justice. And a whole lot more folks armed, daily, than on the west side.

Outside of that car fire in the Ashland area, those ones along that Greenway seem VERY suspicious.

And that report today of the ones being set near Dexter Lake.

I do believe some were "opportunistic" events by folks looking to create more havoc.

But, as you stated, there are likely a bunch more going to be determined to be power line related after that wind event the other night. We had two outages down here in less than 24 hours, 3 + hours and another about 2 hours for a problem they found once daylight happened very close (4 miles) to our house.

One thing I always notice on the way over the hill, a whole lot of those homes on 66 going to Ashland, or 140 (?) going to Medford are surrounded by trees, some nearly right up to the house. I know folks like their trees, but sometimes it might be prudent to have a defensible space, ya think? I've seen it all over the West, mountains of CA, AZ, OR, WA, even SE AK. Trees right up to the dooryard. Would drive me nuts as I grew up with 300 + days of sun and I like to see it. Shade is handy, but I've got shade inside the house, don't need a tree right up to the side of the buildings.

Easily available resources. I lived a good number of years in Redwood country. Shingle roofs and shake siding were quite common in the older neighborhoods. Some interesting construction techniques too, like no studs in the wall. Three layers of redwood 1x10, herringboned diagonally, cut holes through the three layers to put in windows and doors. Can't say it didn't work, the one house I lived in in the 90's was built before 1904 and survived a whole lot of earthquakes, including about 7 above 5.0M in the 8 years I was there. Apparently can flex quite nicely.

I'd change out our asphalt shingles in a minute for metal if I had more cash. We don't get many big snowstorms, but it might help in the event of a very close fire. The place has cement siding already and a big firebreak around us, but anything helps. Roofing is still good for maybe 10 more years? When it's time, it'll get metal if we're still here.

Oregon Governor is trying to set blame on the Republican legislators who walked out and stayed out on a sessions funding package bill last year, iirc.

One part of the massive democratic bill included a wildfire funding package that would have provided cash to agencies to remove dense underbrush from Oregon Forests.

Yep, this twice in a lifetime event is the fault of Republicans.

Politics never stops.

😎

LOL

Metal roofs help. But around here it's the gutters that get ya. Even if we'd have cleaned them this weekend, they'd be full again from the wind blowing male fir cones off the trees since the.

Might be rethinking those perpetual gutter cover ads...

Steve,

Wasn't attempting to be contrary to your post.. rreading the Medford Pd FB page, there are also a lot of people posting below it, that don't really believe it, from what they have seen and what they have heard... I'm just one of them..

Mr Heister brings up a lot of good points to point to power lines...a lot of Oregon is dealing with these fires and it might be the real rreason.. It probably applies to the Happy Camp's fire, and that is taking a path that has been taken before north bound over the mountains into Oregon more than once since I've lived here...

Medford, I don't think so, common ground to a lot of these fires in the Rogue Valley have been started along the Greenway..
The one that blew up yesterday down near Costco at 3 in the afternoon had witneses, and the wind had actually died down, and there was no ignition source.. I had just got gas about 200 yds from where it started 15 minutes before hand....

The fires on the Greenway, if you see the aftermath, and the areas that burned, Minus Phoenix and Talent, one can see the Rogue Valley Fire Assets did an unbelievable job, of putting out the fires as they tried to spread...bunch of orchards and hemp grows along the Greenway, that escaped being burned.. I wonder if they just fired up their irrigation equipment and wet it down enough to prevent the orchards taking fire on....

Resources right in Phoenix and Talent, they didn't have assets to fight something like this...and back up was too busy elsewhere.. its just hard not to feel real anger, when you see people's homes and businesses destroyed.. especially when its an entire trailer park, or pretty much every house on the block, for blocks and blocks..... I'm not aware of any power lines running thru the areas destroyed around the Greenway

Arson, whether Firebug or political /Antifa BLM is still part of this all down here in the Rogue Valley, heavy Trump country...

Multiple rreasons for all of this going on, conditions are ripe.. no one denies that.. emotions are high..time will tell over the Arson part.. supposedly hearing multiple sources that the Feds are down here doing investigations already...

but explanations of Power lines and their weak points from Mr Heister.. one has to wonder, with this potential, why has not politicians who seem to regulated the smallest details of our every day lives, how have rural power lines escaped their scrutiny?
you'd think being on top of that type of stuff, and making companies maintain that stuff would be a no brainer... unless people were getting paid off by Pacific Power and whatever runs the Grid up via Potlandia and northern Oregon...

$100 dollars worth of road flares from Bi Mart in the trunk of some arsonists vehicle, driving up and down I 5, they could burn down half of the I 5 corridor with little effort...and the way they have been sitting Portland on fire nightly for 3 months or more..
along with their claims to branch out... and actually seeing them first hand, in the major smaller towns around the state... its not hard to believe there rhetoric.. and they don't need big numbers of folks to do it..

I'll say in the long run, we are going to find out, that there has been a lot of reasons, all varying, of why we have had to deal with these fires over the last few days, state wide...

I'm sure Kate Brown for once will actually admit that she is in over her head and is relying on others to tell her what to do...
even realize for herself, she isn't the Queen of Oregon she thought she was...

You have any pines around the place?

My brother considered them, but he's surrounded by Ponderosas and says those needled just get caught in the little holes and are a pin to remove.

I've seen some made out of really course material like those abrasive disks folks use for cleaning up cast iron, but of course, those are made of some sort of polymer which likely would catch fire along with stopping those cones from filling your gutters.

Good luck with it.

Laughable... who would have guessed?

Liberals never quit pointing the finger at others for their failures...if they can't blame the Republicans.. there is always the Russians readily available to blame...

and then how many local idiots will mark their ballots for democRATS once again in 60 days...

I had covers on my gutters but all the ponderosa pines were removed near the house and out buildings so that helped a lot.

I ve had a few close fires and its amazing once the fire gets up in the crowns of the ponderosa pines and the wind picks up. Just like a giant Roman candles

Understand. No worries!

Warren Buffet is a major stockholder in Pacific Power and the contract tree trimmers working for Pacific Power here in the next county south of you guys, claim since he became involved, Pacificorp has actually cut back on line maintenance. You would think after the lesson learned in Paradise CA a couple years back, which cost PG&E so heavily, they would be increasing maintenance. The trimmers also told me that the poles need to be closer together to avoid long spans that droop on hot days when wind can cause them to swing and arc together.

Seafire...check your pm please?

We had trimmers out on our road earlier this summer. Spent a couple weeks going all along the poles all over our hill.

If they hadn't I'm sure we would have had power lines down.

Sheriff's office just put out a statement asking people to quit spreading rumors about fires being intentionally started, at least in this county. Said 911/dispatch has been overwhelmed with calls and questions about it.

And tomorrow is September 11...

Imagine that

What our Sheriff is saying about the antifa angle:

Remember when we said to follow official sources only. Remember when we said rumors make this already difficult incident even harder? Rumors spread just like wildfire and now our 9-1-1 dispatchers and professional staff are being overrun with requests for information and inquiries on an UNTRUE rumor that 6 Antifa members have been arrested for setting fires in DOUGLAS COUNTY, OREGON.

THIS IS NOT TRUE! Unfortunately, people are spreading this rumor and it is causing problems.

https://www.facebook.com/DouglasCoSO

Typing this when GW posted above.

Take away the rumors what will ol tin foil hat fireballz post?

I'm nice to any and everyone, and lots of guys here will testify to it, until you make it a point to be a dick to me. Even then I try to keep the peace and often PM to try to talk it out. But some just aren't capable of civil discourse.

You yourself are a perfect example. When your wife was sick I asked about her, didn't know you from Adam. You're trying to fit into the cute crowd so you've chosen your path of least resistance rather than truth. Your problem not mine.

therein lies the rub as some Englishman once said.

"We" try to vote in fiscally conservative folks, "They" try to put together massive spending packages, "our folks" don't play, the whole package gets cancelled and nothing gets done.

Anyone who has followed my posts here every fire season knows my feelings on the issue. Many, if not most, of these major fires start in areas that are not commercially important. Chaparral, scrublands, Oak grasslands, sagebrush/juniper grasslands, roadside brush (Carr fire and apparently one of the Ashland fires). Because there's no financial value to these lands (maybe some grazing and firewood permitting) there is no push to spend money on REAL fire prevention in these areas.

No commercial company is going into these areas without being compensated with taxpayer monies. No Govt agency (Fed,State, Local) is going into these areas without raising taxes or cutting other necessary programs (roads, police, fire). There's NO money in thinning or controlled burning in chaparral or scrublands.

In areas with productive forests it's sometimes possible to get a commercial operation in there to take some of the small stuff down................if they can get a BIG harvest of merchantable timber. As in enough to cover them losing money on cutting down pecker poles. (dog hair thickets to some of y'all) . But, they'd just as soon go in and harvest good trees and leave the rest.

Someone mentioned "clear cuts" as being part of the answer? Ever seen a clearcut a couple of years into recovery go up in flames, especially on private land where they've nuked the brush with weed killer to release the conifers? That might be worse than a chaparral fire sometimes.

Lots of solutions...............................NONE of them cheap............and we don't get to pick and choose where our tax dollars go unfortunately. Really sticky for Fed stuff. Folks in the Midwest and back East don't want billions of $$$ going to clear brush and chaparral on our Western Public Lands. It's "our Western problem" after all, right? Well, I get a bit miffed every decade or two when the Mississippi or Missouri floods a good chunk of cities along their banks and folks are allowed to rebuild in the flood zone and "my" money is used to fund the rebuild.

Most of us here on the 'fire are fiscal conservatives and don't want to pay more in taxes for most anything. So we get to live with wildfires out here in the West, floods in the midwest, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast (people build back again as soon as the wind stops blowing, right?), Blizzards and Nor'easters on the Atlantic coasts.

And then there's.............................The Corona.........................which we're all going to pay for for a long long time.