Bush

CANYON CITY — Now that the wildfires burning in and around Grant County have died down, local emergency management officials have time to catch their breath — and begin to calculate the damage done to the county.

Here’s a preliminary tally, as reported to the Grant County Court by Emergency Management Coordinator Eric Bush:

• Total area burned in Grant County — 169,800 acres, or about 265 square miles.

• Area of public land burned: 97,400 acres.

• Area of private land burned: 72,400 acres.

• Number of landowners impacted: 120.

• Structures destroyed or severely damaged: 15.

• Cost of fighting the fires: $200 million and counting.

• Deaths: 1.

A perfect firestorm

Driven by unusually hot and dry conditions, wildfires began erupting across Eastern Oregon in mid-July. By the end of the month, no fewer than six major blazes were either burning in various parts of Grant County or getting dangerously close to the county line.

Burning partially or entirely within the county were the Falls Fire, which eventually consumed nearly 152,000 acres, the 20,000-acre Courtrock Fire and the 183,000-acre Battle Mountain Complex. Just over the county line were the 54,000-acre Telephone Fire, the 87,000-acre Crazy Creek Fire and the 137,000-acre Lone Rock Fire.

As the fires crept (or, in some cases, raced) closer to populated areas, scores of Grant County residents were advised to flee their homes and seek safety from the flames, although a significant number chose to stay and protect their property. 

Thankfully, none of those people died. However, more than a dozen structures were lost to the flames. And tragically, a Bureau of Land Management-contracted firefighter died in a plane crash.

James Bailey Maxwell, 74, of Clarkston, Washington, was flying a single-engine air tanker dropping flame retardant on a lightning-sparked blaze in the vicinity of the Falls Fire when his aircraft was reported missing shortly before 7 p.m. on July 25 near Seneca. 

The next morning, members of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Team found Maxwell’s body with the wreckage of his plane. 

Bush acknowledged “the human toll” of fighting the fires in his presentation to the Grant County Court on Wednesday, Aug. 21. 

But he also noted that, at least for now, the danger has largely passed.

“Yesterday we removed our last evacuation zones in Grant County — we started on July 13, and yesterday we removed the last one,” he told the court. 

“Not all of the fires are completely contained, from a technical standpoint, but I would describe them as controlled.”

(As of Tuesday, Aug. 27, the Falls, Courtrock and Telephone fires were 100% contained, according to the InciWeb fire information website. The Crazy Creek Fire had reached 93% containment, the Battle Mountain Complex was at 94% and the Lone Rock Fire was at 98%.)

“The good news,” Bush told the court members, “is this could have been much, much worse in terms of loss of structures.”

Close to home

At the height of the fires, Bush said in a follow-up interview, Level 3 “go now” evacuation advisories were issued for Dale, Monument and the Resort at Silvies Valley Ranch.

However, thanks to the efforts of firefighters and property owners, the damage to buildings was kept to a minimum.

“We had structural firefighters on the ground, working with the wildland firefighters,” Bush said. “There were some flat-out heroic acts … where homes were saved.”

Not every building could be protected, however. Across the county, five homes and 10 other structures were destroyed or severely damaged by the fires.

Other impacts of the fires are still being tallied. It’s not yet known how many head of cattle, board-feet of timber, acres of grazing land or miles of fenceline were destroyed, but there’s no doubt the damage was significant. 

Recovery, Bush predicted, “will take years.”

Recovery efforts

A working group has been formed to assess the damage to natural resources in the county and come up with ways to help landowners and livestock producers recover.

Kyle Sullivan of the Grant Soil and Water Conservation District, who’s heading up the working group, said it’s still too early to quantify the full effects of the fires.

“We’re all still trying to understand the impact,” he said.

To that end, the district has developed a form landowners can fill out to detail damage to fences, developed springs, structures, equipment, timber, roads, rangeland and feed.

The information gathered from the forms will be passed on to state and federal officials to support the need for disaster relief funding. Forms are available online at grantswcd.net/2024-wildfire-impacts.

“We’re looking to tell the story of the impacts of all the fires in Eastern Oregon,” Sullivan said. 

The immediate priorities are repairing fences and reseeding burned-over rangeland, Sullivan said, “because in order to manage the livestock you need to have the tools to manage them with.”

While many Grant County livestock producers rely heavily on grazing allotments on national forest lands to feed their cattle, Sullivan said initial efforts to replant grass in fire-damaged areas will likely come on private lands because public land managers “have their own protocols” they have to follow.

“We’re focused on what kind of funding we can get in the short term to do some seeding over the winter,” he said.