Central Oregon wildfire overview from fire officials, July 20

[00:00:00]Good evening. My name is Ryan Miller. I work for the Oregon Department of Forestry and I wanted to give folks a little perspective on on how all of this is working together. So behind me, you'll see a map. You might hear the term theater of operations. What we're talking about there is that all of the fires across the landscape that are in a relatively close proximity. The question comes up is how do how do we coordinate all this? How do we How do the teams know what to do and how do how do they How do they get the resources they need?

[00:00:28]I currently serve as the deputy agency administrator for ODF Team 2 on the Acola Fire right over here. Alongside me are agency administrators from a variety of agencies. As you can see, the landscape covers all different land management agencies and fire protection agencies.

[00:00:48]Those agencies are the US Wildland Fire Service, the US Forest Service, the Oregon State Fire Marshal, and the Warm Springs Tribe.

[00:00:58]Um of importance with this this briefing here is that ODF CIMT 2 is currently assigned to the Acola Fire and ODF Team 3 is assigned to Brewer and Box Springs.

[00:01:12]The Oregon State Fire Marshal Red Team is entered into unified command with both teams.

[00:01:18]So they're they're able to join forces in lockstep providing structure protection, point protection, and assistance as needed. So I just wanted to share that with you. Across the the theater of operations, each one of these fires is assigned agency administrators that can help tell the story be a single point of contact for the the teams to eliminate confusion, redundancy, and help the teams get what they need and be efficient. Thank you.

[00:01:50]>> Good evening. Craig Pettinger, deputy incident commander for ODF CIMT 2.

[00:01:55]Uh last Thursday at 6:00 p.m. we were dispatched to this fire for the Agua fire.

[00:02:03]And uh 24 hours later we took command of that fire.

[00:02:07]The the the the directions that we were given by the agency administrators were were pretty simple. The number one was watch out for firefighter and public safety. And number two was essentially put the fire out.

[00:02:21]Pretty clear instructions uh that we're working on. In order to do those those two objectives that they gave us, we've had both crews and engines working 24 hours a day non-stop from the point that we took the fire. We're also using aircraft when the conditions allow during the day uh to keep a check on that fire.

[00:02:46]And we'll keep doing that until this fire is complete, the threat is gone, and uh we can return it back to the district.

[00:03:01]>> Good evening, everyone. I'm Eric Perkins, Deputy Incident Commander for ODF Team 3.

[00:03:07]Um like Matt said earlier, uh our team took over the Brewer and Box Springs fires 25 hours ago.

[00:03:17]First, I'd like to thank the local resources um for all the hard work and it they did, set us up with an anchor paint anchor point, uh and all the hard work that Team 2 did um prior to us coming here. So, thank you for that. As you've heard, we there's a lot of fires in in close proximity to each other, so we're competing for a finite amount of resources.

[00:03:47]That's causing us to have a lot more coordination than we typically do with adjacent um fire teams, but just on we're coordinating with OD- ODF team two here, and today we coordinated with the Rogue Creek complex team and the Coyote complex down to our south.

[00:04:11]Um a lot of like I said earlier, we're competing for the same resources, but our cooperators a lot of that cooperator um community is are touched by multiple fires as well.

[00:04:25]So, we're coordinating meeting times and the things that we typically don't have to do because we don't typically have that many large fires that close together. So.

[00:04:36]Um as always, firefighter and public safety are number one priorities. Uh property next, and and we're we're actually doing a really good job with that. On as Matt had said earlier, on the Brewer fire, we got a pretty good toehold on that north end, and most of our efforts have been concentrated on Brewer with some structure protection, some point protection there, but we also got um resources out there on Box Springs today and made pretty good progress. So, that's it. Thank you.

[00:05:15]>> Good evening, everybody. My name is Ian Yocum, and I uh probably serve as the incident commander for the Oregon State Fire Marshals red team. And uh I just want to say uh we have a lot of firefighters out there working hard for you. And um just want to go over just a little bit of uh some stats for the Agua fire. We're sitting about 10,391 acres. We have a total of 491 firefighters that are working that fire.

[00:05:41]On the Oregon structural side, we represent all of the structural firefighters that come from across the state, across all 36 counties that are here to serve your community. Uh we also, because of the resources and because all of the fires that are throughout the entire state, we've also called in California. We have two task forces from California that are here to assist us. And when I say task forces, those are five engines in each task force with uh the right equipment and personnel to defend and protect your homes.

[00:06:10]Um currently uh we have 134 folks under some sort of level of evacuation on the Aqua fire and um we're doing everything that we can to get you back into your homes. On the Brewer fire, we're sitting at 24,460 acres. We have a total of 628 personnel.

[00:06:28]We have three task forces and again another California task force in there as well. And we have a total of 591 under some sort of uh evacuation level.

[00:06:38]For those that are evacuated, I know you want to get home. We want you to get home.

[00:06:43]That's what we're here to do. Um for those that are near the fire, any of these fires, please sign up for those active alerts, listen to the sheriff's office, emergency management, be prepared. Uh give the firefighters a fighting chance to get into your homes and protect your homes. We have the right people, we have the firefighters, we're all here to do whatever we can to make sure that we protect your homes and get you back into your homes as quickly as possible.

[00:07:09]We're unified, we're one team, one mission, one plan. Our job is to take care of you, our firefighters, and this community. Um with that, uh please be safe. Again, listen to the alerts.

[00:07:22]Listen uh to the emergency management, to the sites, follow the pages, communicate with each other, and