Oregon Now Has Nine Large, Uncontained Wildfires

This past week, crews across the state have had to contend with extreme fire weather: high winds, low humidity and a historic drought.

Bootleg red Red sky from the Bootleg Fire. (Justin Yau)
By Shannon Gormley

The Pacific Northwest’s wildfire season is off to an early, ferocious start.

As of today, there are 15 large, uncontained fires in the Pacific Northwest—nine in Oregon and six in Washington, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

The largest of those burns is the Klamath Basin’s Bootleg Fire. Now over 240,000 acres, Bootleg is the biggest wildfire not just in Oregon, but in the entire country.

It’s not the only blaze consuming thousands of acres in Oregon, however. Umpqua Forest’s Jack Fire and the Grandview Fire outside of Sisters are 16,000 and nearly 6,000 acres, respectively. Just reported yesterday, the remote Elbow Creek Fire in the northeast corner of Oregon is already burning 9,000 acres.

This past week, crews across the state have had to contend with extreme fire weather: high winds, low humidity and a historic drought.

For the Bootleg Fire, conditions are unlikely to improve anytime soon. Today, the National Weather Service issued another red flag warning through tomorrow night for the Klamath Basin, meaning the critical fire weather is likely to continue.

There’s better news for the state’s second- and fourth-largest conflagrations. The Jack Fire is currently 25% contained as firefighters were able to hold containment lines overnight. The National Weather Service’s red flag warning for the Grandview Fire expired last night as temperatures dropped and humidity recovered overnight.


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