Whole new ballgame: Fighting Oregon fires in the era of climate change

From KLCC Studios, this is Oregon on the record. I'm Michael Dunn. Fighting wildland fires in Oregon has never been easy. The vast wilderness and rangeland and incredibly different elevations and topographies has always made it tough. But at least in previous decades, it was predictable. Summer heat and dry vegetation coupled with lightning strikes and sometimes careless humans meant a few months of active firefighting. But now, fire is a 12-month phenomenon fueled by a warming climate and drier and drier fuels. We hardly have wildfires anymore. We have wildfire complexes that become massive at an almost impossible to believe rate of speed. Today on the show, you'll hear from one of the key figures in Oregon's firefighting structure. and learn how they've had to develop and deploy new strategies to keep up with Oregon's new normal of almost constant fire. That's next on Oregon on the record.

If you're sick of hearing about wildfires and sick of breathing unhealthy air, just think about how the people who have to fight them feel right about this time every summer. And the job is getting more and more difficult and more dangerous. Right now, you'll hear from one of Oregon Department of Forestry's firefighting leaders and hear about how the game has changed. Kyle Williams, he's the deputy director for fire operations at the Oregon Department of Forestry. Mr. Williams, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us. Yeah, you bet. Really appreciate the invite. Yeah, maybe start with this. Kind of give the audience an overview of how we've traditionally fought wildfires in our state, you know, maybe 10, 20 years ago, because I do want to get into the differences that we're seeing now. But what was kind of the traditional way to attack a wildfire? Well, so it all starts at the local level, and our agency, the Department of Forestry, is spread out. We protect about 16.2 million acres around the state. And that's a little bit of, I think, the first piece of grounding that... you know, people could use is that there's multiple agencies across the state that are responsible for wildland fire. And it starts where you would think, right? The Forest Service, they've got about 16 million-ish acres of forest land that they manage and protect. And then we protect primarily private land throughout the state. The chunk of state-owned land is actually relatively small in our portfolio. But largely... you know private land the timberland and then folks in their backyards that kind of stuff and then you've got your local fire service as well that that partners with what you would term those initial attack fires which are the small ones uh is and the ones that you know that's what we're built to go get on get quickly okay So at that local level, you'd get the phone call, hey, there's a fire out on such and such road, and we'd send our local resources, a couple of engines, maybe a helicopter, and a couple of our partners would show up. you'd largely be successful. Our key performance measure as an agency is a target of putting out 98% of wildfires that occur on our jurisdiction at 10 acres or less. So that really speaks to a model built around rapid response, you know, identification. of where that fire is, get there quick, put it out small, save lots of money and a lot of damage. Yeah, yeah. And that, that, that, that, that was how the whole system was built, frankly. Uh,

About 100 years. Yeah. And of course, we live in a very diverse state, a very diverse environment. Talk a little bit about the, under that same strategy, talk about, you know, fighting a fire in eastern Oregon on grasslands versus a very dense forest like the coastal range. There you go, right? We protect from Astoria to Medford, out to Wallowa, Pryneville, everywhere in between, right? And so those are very different fuel types, very different fire behaviors. And we do, in order to address that, we are split into districts around the state. And each district has a little bit different mix of resources. So you might be heavier to engines in one part of the state where you've got lots of good road access, maybe heavier fuels. And then we've got a hell attack crew out in our John Day office, which is a reflection of, you know, very remote, not very many roads, got to get there by air, and then deploy firefighters as fast as you can in those in those. you know, more grassy environments. And so we try and we try and do it through a mix of that. And then we add statewide severe, we call them severity assets. We contract with aviation vendors to provide additional helicopters, single engine air tankers, and we're getting into the business of having them provide additional sort of shorter hand crew resources and engines that we can bring to bear and move around the state, you know, based on where the fire risk might be the highest. And again, you mix and match your resources to the fuel type and how likely those fires are to get big and then be resource intensive. Okay. So we described how the system was built over time, but things are changing, right? How is it different today to attack a fire anywhere in our state? Well, yeah, and we've seen certainly a more challenging environment over the last decade plus. I sort of used 2012 as the inflection point and when things felt different. And we had in that summer the Douglas complex, and it was a lightning storm that can, and we're used to lightning. you know, tracked up I-5, put down more starts than we could address at that initial attack phase with our local resources and turned into a 50,000 acre complex. And we're like, whoa, something's different. And then we've just stacked year after year after year of bigger and more challenging fire seasons. You get to 2024, that was the same recipe. We had overwhelming lightning initial attack.

and some significant human-caused fire starts that just completely took off in heavy wind and bad conditions and overwhelmed our ability to keep up with them. And we really thought 24, right, we burned almost, we burned 1.9 million acres. And wow, that's the high bar and we're going to have a couple of years to take a breath. And 2026 has already surpassed it. And what's happening out there is... And it's a combination of factors, right? And we know about the snow drought from this winter, setting us up really, really severe fire danger into this summer. And then when you put down the lightning events that we've had this summer, it's more fire than our two engines that we normally would go be successful with can catch. And just yesterday, there was a fire down in the Klamath area, right spring. It started in a heavy timber component on some Forest Service land that was at 100 acres by the time the initial attack resources were responding to it. And we're just not getting an opportunity to be successful at initial attack, which is how all of these agencies are built. And so then they turn into, you know, multiple day, thousands of acres. And when you're having fires out in some of that eastern Oregon, that grass component and those lighter fuels, They're 100,000 acres in a day or two. Wow. And what that requires from a resource, you know, just the number of people and the span of control and the scale that you're trying to cover has been way more than what we were dealing with 20 years ago. Yeah. If you're just joining us, we're talking with Kyle Williams. He's the deputy director of fire operations at Oregon Department of Forestry. A couple quick questions. When does a fire become a complex? What does that mean to the average person? Yeah, good, good. parsing of terms there. So a complex is a reference we use for multiple fires that are in the same general vicinity and managed under one organization. And so it could be at the local level, you know, a lightning bust comes through and you've got 10 fires that start. You might call that the July 12th complex. And that just means that that district is managing that group. There's some other, right? So then for this summer, people have heard about the row complex. And that's a reflection of multiple fires that all started near on or about the same general area and burned together. And instead of having a list of 12 fire names, you just put them all under that row complex and you manage them under one organization, one financial tracking system, one ordering system. And it just simplifies the operations, creates efficiency. And it's kind of like putting a bunch of eggs into one basket, essentially.

I think most people, when we hear about in news reports about fires, wildfires, we have a sense of size because we often report about how many acres are burning and so on and so forth. But I wanted to talk a little bit about more another aspect that you brought up a little bit here is speed. You know, you talked about how, you know, the strategy is to is rapid deployment, but is it? Not just that fires are, you know, the heat, the size, the danger, is speed something that maybe the layperson needs to understand how detrimental and how devastating fire speed can be. Yeah, it's the great equalizer. And we've gotten faster at our detection and deployment over the last couple decades, significantly faster. Built out our camera detection network, investments in, you know, airplane technology that helps us identify our fire when it's small. But what's happening, and especially this summer, is by the time you get there, it's already more than, again, like I mentioned, typically you would send your first two engines out the door. They would get there. The fire is a half acre. Okay, and you can start putting water on it and digging the line around it and you're good. But by the time you're getting there this summer, it's 100 acres and it has a 15 mile an hour wind on it, and it's up and over the ridge and into a bunch of heavier fuel, and you're already scrambling to order more resources to come help you catch up to it. That's been over and over and over again the examples from this summer. And in many instances, not only are they big by the time you're there, there's... a dozen of them and you've only got enough resources to get to five or six. Yeah. So that's been that's been really the difference maker in the last few years for us. With these fires getting bigger and faster and those sorts of things, talk about safety for the people fighting the fires. I mean, I imagine that's becoming an even bigger concern than maybe 20, 30 years ago. That's absolutely a huge component. We always, our sort of mantra at the Department of Forestry is to fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first. And so with that as, you know, the main priority when we're deploying to an incident, And it's already, say, 100 acres with a wind on it and blowing up and over the hill. You've really got to pay attention to the line management. So when you deploy those resources, is there adequate folks to go keep them safe and then make the decisions about next step and next step and still be safe? And that's really been the pinch point again this summer is that there's so much fire spread across the state. Every agency is experiencing this bottleneck in our line supervision. And those are our single resource bosses, which are keeping track of, say, a hand crew or an engine or a dozer and making sure that they're integrated into the bigger firefight from a safe perspective. You move up from there to what we call task force leaders, and they would supervise, you know, five to seven of those resources on a piece of line. And then a division supervisor.

would supervise you know five task force leaders and that's how we build it's it's it's it models similarly to a military type operation okay and when you don't have those single resource bosses task force leaders and division supervisors to sit spread across a fire that has 55 miles of perimeter uh in order to make sure that folks are able to safely engage you're really you're really hamstrung and your ability to keep up with that fire as it's marching across the landscape. Yeah, yeah. It's easy oftentimes for, I'm here in downtown Eugene. It's easy when we, when we report on wildfires, especially during summertime, to think of it as kind of out there, you know, far away, you know, especially in the more wilderness areas. But I wanted to talk, especially as we're seeing. the very environment of wildfire changing talk about more incursions or more danger with regard to sort of the rural urban interface that obviously lane county where i'm talking to you from has a lot that that's a that's a really important piece of this puzzle for us and and as i talked about the multiple agencies that that protect wildland across the state To your point, it's easy to think about, you know, that fires way up on the mountain. It's on the Cascade Crest, and that's a challenge. Well, for ODF, we typically live in an environment. You know, I talk about the top of the mountain is generally a federal jurisdiction and the bottom of the valley is your local fire service and everything in between is some form of private land that ODF protects. And so when you think about the fires that ODF has deployed to and managed this summer, you talk about East Evans Creek. and the threat to Shady Cove and Medford and all of the communities that were out there. That was a huge component of that firefight. There was frankly nowhere left for us to fit that fire. And so it becomes very resource intensive. We have to order a lot in order to fight fire in that environment. We partner very well with the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office and their Department of Oregon State Fire Marshal. And they have access through their incident management teams to additional local fire service that are that are specifically trained and professional in that, you know, fighting fire around homes. And so we partner with them, but it's incredibly resource intensive. Then you look at Aqua, right, and it's threat to sisters. And as it was bearing down to the south, what it took to stop that fire where it's at. we had the brewer fire out there north of prineville and what you have to do when you're fighting fire in on and around structures from resource intensive perspective that that's driving a lot of our you know ordering and resource engagements and prioritization When you're in that urban interface environment, there is no margin for error. And so it's forcing us to have to really deploy a lot of resources and intensive effort in those places. And to your point, that's...

The Eugene, right, urban interface environment, when you don't have very much of a margin for error with your fire, it is incumbent upon every element of the system to be really good at what they're doing. That's us on the wildland side. That's the fire marshal's teams, you know, in the backyard fighting that fire, driving it around. And frankly, it's the landowners before the fire even starts. creating some defensible space in the off season so that that home will survive because there are not enough firefighters to go to every backyard and be on every porch and every fire that's pushing into an interface environment. And so that there's there's an element of of the homeowner that that needs to be engaged in this as well. Yeah. I have heard from. military leaders that wars are won before they're ever thought talking about or excuse me wars are run before they're ever fought because of planning and strategy you know when you all have downtime you know after the fire season take us through especially now with these more intense fires how is this the strategy sort of shifted changed evolved to meet the challenge Well, there's another good difference from 20 years ago. Jessica can tell you, I'm not sure that there is an offseason anymore in terms of the agency and the work and the planning to your point. And frankly, when we're even having fires, we've managed to have a fire all 12 months out of the year. Wow. Yeah. And so. Immediately after a fire season, we'll just use this one, for example. All fall, what we will do is we conduct after-action reviews. So did all the things we tried this summer work? Can they be better? What improvements do we need to make? What processes do we need to improve and tighten up? And every fire season, we go through that process of continuous improvement in the fall. You move into the winter and you sort of shift your mindset to preparation for the next fire season. And so you're making sure that all of our cash supplies are purchased and put back on the shelf. You start the process of training. We never stop training folks around here because, again, I mentioned that bottleneck of that middle management. It takes a lot of different functions to be successful when fire is out there on the landscape. And so you'll train all winter long in my position. It's legislative engagement. So, right, we've got another long session starting up coming up here in January, February. I'll be engaged. The agency will be engaged in conversations in the capital. all through until the end of June. That's budget preparation. That's, you know, future investment. That's policy work. And then you'll be right back in June. And we kick it off with the governor's wildfire briefing in May. And the next fire season is already here. And so there's a lot, a lot, a lot of preparation, just like any, any you mentioned military example or sports example, you name it. It's never about.

just showing up to the game, it's being, all of the work is in the preparation for it. Well, and to that point about the legislature, is there more that we as a state need to do to give people such as yourself the resources you need, but also, you know, I don't know, a more inclusive structure so that like you talked about how it starts at the homeowner level and so on and so forth. Maybe as a state, we need to be thinking differently about wildfire than we got used to, as you said, maybe just 20 years ago. So yes, 10 years ago, I would have said everything you just recited was 100% correct. We need to be thinking about this more. We need to be doing more. And then we actually started to make some real progress. And, you know, started with 2019, a governor's wildfire council, a whole bunch of folks that across many different aspects of impacts from fire got together and started to chart. What does a future Oregon look like to address? you know what we think might be in front of us and so fast forward seven years there's been some significant milestones and improvement and adaptation in how oregon responds to these wildfires you look at 3940 the house bill 3940 from last session that for the first time committed a dedicated funding source for mitigation work so creating a more resilient landscape out there that's ready to receive fire and not have it be so catastrophic dedicated funding for preparing our communities and our built environment for inevitable wildfire. We had not, prior to last year, ever had consistent dedicated funding to help address what we call the other two legs of the cohesive wildfire strategy. And that's this idea that... investment can't just happen in the response when a fire actually, you know, occurs. It also has to be into your point earlier, the getting ready for it. And so those three legs are creating resilient landscapes, prepared communities, defensible space, and inadequate and prepared response function. And so. The last six years, the legislature has really spent more time talking about that and thinking about that from both a policy and investment perspective. Are we done? Absolutely not.

I'd say we are just starting. It took 100 years, honestly, maybe plus, to get to where we are from a fuel and environment perspective. And it's going to take us a couple decades of really focused and intentional work to get to a point where when fire does happen in this state, it does not have catastrophic consequences. He is Kyle Williams, Deputy Director of Fire Operations at the Oregon Department of Forestry. Kyle, best of luck to you and your team, and thank you so much for coming on and talking with us. Yeah, I appreciate it, Michael. That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we check in with Senator Ron Wyden and get his take on all things happening in D.C., as well as back home in Oregon, including his investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and the banks and his opinion on what's happening with former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. I'm Michael Dunn, host of Oregon on the record. Thanks for listening.