News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sisters Country residents awoke to thick smoke several days last week.
A pair of prescribed burns - one on private land, another in the National Forest - inundated Sisters and some surrounding areas with smoke last week.
Several Sisters Country residents contacted The Nugget to comment on the smoke. One reported concerns about the health of elderly people in the area and another said that his smoke alarm went off when he left his window open overnight.
Mark Rapp, a fire manager with the Sisters Ranger District, acknowledged the problem.
Rapp said that a 60-acre burn on private land known as the "McKay Property" southeast of Sisters on Tuesday created the smoke that hung close to the ground in Sisters on Wednesday
morning.
The heavy smoke caused GFP Enterprises to suspend the project.
"They cut it off when it slammed Sisters on Wednesday night," Rapp said. "Although they had favorable burn conditions, it was obviously not the best ventilation. It laid right across Patterson Ranch and rolled into town for about a three-hour period."
A 135-acre Forest Service burn near Highway 20 west of Sisters later in the week created smoky conditions in the Sage Meadow/Indian Ford/High Meadow area, Rapp said.
Rapp said that conditions had been good during the day, with good air mixing to disperse smoke. However, precipitous drops in the breeze let smoke lay in among local communities.
"The wind just drops off when the sun goes down and smoke settles in because it loses its heat," Rapp said.
The Forest Service held off on a burn planned for Friday due to smoke management concerns. They moved to a different project in Camp Sherman where conditions were better.
Rapp said he has had numerous contacts with people who understand the importance of prescribed fire for restoring forest health and reducing the fuels that feed wildfires. However, people are concerned about the health and quality-of-life impacts of smoke laying in over their communities.
Rapp said he understands that and that it is very difficult trying to do the work without impacting anyone.
The work will continue based on weather conditions - and it is almost endless. Years of fire suppression dating back to 1910 have left forests over-fueled across the West, and the Sisters Ranger District is no exception. Only in the past decade or so has policy shifted to reintroduce fire into the ecosystem - and doing so brings conflicts with forest residents.
"We have so many years of work that we didn't do and we're paying for that now," Rapp said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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