Blalock Canyon fire causes evacuation of some residents

Published 8:53 pm Friday, July 6, 2007

ARLINGTON – Someone standing on Highway 19 near Arlington Friday evening could have easily imagined the end of the world. Hot, wind-whipped fires burned to the west and the southeast.

To the west, dark smoke rose from a massive wildfire more than a mile wide and nearly 10 miles long, as it moved rapidly east from Blalock Canyon toward the town of Arlington, threatening homes. Several miles southeast, another tenacious fire burned hot across acres of wheatland and raced toward Eightmile Road.

A blood-red sun barely penetrated thick, black smoke that boiled up into the sky.

The Blalock Canyon fire started in the early afternoon after a tractor sparked a wheat field. Firefighters from Morrow County – Heppner, Irrigon and Boardman Fire Departments – headed toward Arlington for mutual aid. Umatilla County soon followed, sending units from Hermiston, Stanfield, Pendleton, Umatilla and the tribes. Sherman County also joined Gilliam County in the effort.

As farmworker Evencio Salas drove his tractor through wheatland, he looked back to see flames. The fire gained momentum as dry winds fanned it.

“I stomped the fire with my shoes but it took off in the wheat,” Salas said.

Firefighters started to gain control by early evening, until it blew up again. As the sun started to set, the fire threatened a group of houses and barns along Highway 19 on property owned by Rice Management. Along the ridge above the buildings were a collection of wind towers operated by the company.

Some of the residents along the highway were advised to leave the area.

As the fire drew closer, a panicked black Labrador retriever ran up the farm’s long drive to the highway. An emergency vehicle and a line of cars followed, five minutes later.

“They gave us two minutes to get out of there,” said Millie Drummond, who lives on the property with her husband Arnold and their family. “It’s out the back door right now.”

Drummond, with her two grandchildren in the car, collected their black lab, Jake. They parked at the end of the driveway, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

The children, Austin and Shelby Fritz, visiting from Nebraska, looked shaken.

“We were watching a movie and smoke started coming in the house,” said Shelby, 9. “There were black pieces of wood all over in the sky – my brother (age 7) started crying.”

A worried knot of residents from the two houses and neighbors watched from the highway as fire broke over the ridge. One of the residents, Johnny Hughes, rushed back to rescue his 2002 Harley-Davidson Softail and returned with the motorcycle.

As they watched, the orange glow in the sky intensified and a grove of trees near the houses darkened into silhouettes. Firefighters, in a contingent of pumper trucks, ringed the property and attacked the fire.

At press time, firefighters appeared to have averted the oncoming flames from the buildings, though heavy winds continued to fan the fire and send it in the direction of Arlington.

Earlier in the evening, Ione Fire Chief Virgil Morgan broke off from the Blalock Canyon Fire after getting a report of a fire near Eightmile Road. He wore a worried expression as flames tore across the landscape downhill toward Eightmile Road.

“We’re pulling some people off of Blalock,” he said. “We’re stretched thin.”

At the rear of the fire, Jim and Sarah Rucker and others used small pumper trucks to attack the flames as it burned their wheat crop.

Busy fire officials weren’t available to share many details about either fire.

By 9:45 p.m., the fire unofficially was labeled a state conflagration fire, meaning local resources had been exhausted.

As of 10 p.m., the Red Cross was preparing to shelter 400 people at Riverside High School in Boardman, should it become necessary to evacuate Arlington.