Wildland fire, as an essential ecological process and natural change agent, should be incorporated into the planning process and wildfire response. The local landscapes need active management to make it more resilient to disturbance and meet management objectives in a variety of conditions.
While successfully responding to approximately 300 fires, COFMS simultaneously wisely chose to used a confinement/containment strategy for the Pacific Fire in the Mt. Washington Wilderness, using a Fire Use Module because the Pacific Fire was burning at a high elevation, late in the fire year and surrounded by previous burn scars and lava flows.
Additionally and simultaneously, COFMS successfully completed a 5,000+ prescribed fire at Canyon 66 on the Ochoco Forest. The prescribed fire was actually initiated earlier than planned because of a forecast of lightning and moisture, which likely would have delayed the event until next fire year.
Prescribed burning operations on the Canyon 66 unit, east of Prineville, Ore. on Ochoco National Forest, successfully accomplished 2,800 acres on Tuesday, more than half the total 5,072 acres planned.
The Chemult Ranger District, Fremont-Winema National Forest plans to implement the Boundary prescribed burn on Friday, September 13, 2019. Favorable weather conditions have created a window of opportunity to successfully treat up to 13,000-acre prescribed burn located 10 miles southwest of Chemult. Aerial ignitions will be in use and planned fire activities are expected to last 2 to 4 days. Parts of Deschutes County are seeing some smoke impacts from this burn.
The primary objective of the prescribed burn is to safely reduce the build-up of dead/down and live surface fuel to a historic fire-adapted ecosystem. The area will also be less susceptible to severe impacts if a wildfire occurs in the future.
