Monday wildfire update (7/20)

[00:00:00]Well, Fox 12 is on fire watch and wildfires have now burned more than 415,000 acres across the state of Oregon. Fire resources are stretched so thin right now that the Oregon Department of Forestry says it is out of complex incident management teams.

[00:00:17]Meanwhile, thousands of people are under evacuation orders. Most of the more than 203,000 acres burning in Oregon are in central Oregon. New photos are showing the widespread damage from the Row Creek complex fire in north central Oregon.

[00:00:33]The complex is made up of several fires that have spread quickly due to hot, dry, and windy conditions. They started during a powerful lightning storm on July 15th. The fires have burned more than 142,000 acres across Wheeler, Wasco, and Crook counties. The fires are still 0% contained. Now, these are pictures of the Hay Creek Complex fire.

[00:00:56]It is also in North Central Oregon.

[00:00:59]These fires have burned about 115,000 acres across Gileiam and Sherman counties. Like the Rogue Creek complex, these fires started during the July 15th lightning storm. The fire is made up of several smaller fires that are burning mostly through grass and rangeand.

[00:01:16]Several evacuation zones have already been put in place in Gileiam and nearby counties.

[00:01:23]Now, just north of Medford, the East Evans Creek fire continues to burn in the Shady Cove area. This fire started last week when a car crashed into a power pole and sparked some dry grass.

[00:01:35]More than 15,000 acres have burned so far. As of this morning, the fire is 8% contained. More than 2,000 people are working to get this fire under control.

[00:01:46]Also take a look at these satellite images of the fire. You can see the impact of the smoke as it pushes north over the Dashutes National Forest flooding the area with unhealthy air.

[00:01:58]Governor Tina Kotak has declared a statewide conflation order bringing in more firefighters and emergency crews to battle these two fast growing wildfires both sparked by lightning. The Akawa but fire just west of Sisters has burned about 10,000 acres. It is 3% contained.

[00:02:16]The Brewer fire east of Madress has grown to more than 24,000 acres and it's being managed now by an Oregon Department of Forestry incident team. Evacuation orders remain in effect across parts of Dashuites, Jefferson, and Crook counties, including level one, two, and three alerts.

[00:02:35]Meteorologist Michael Fcka is joining us now to tell us more about the weather conditions that firefighters out there are facing. Yeah, they're facing some pretty dry conditions, also a little bit breezy at times. And it's that breeze that's also uh reducing the air quality.

[00:02:48]So, it's blowing that wildfire smoke all across eastern parts of the state from Bend out towards Lrand appears to be the worst air quality uh across the state right now. It is either unhealthy or very unhealthy to breathe. But tracking all this surface level smoke out over the next few days, you'll notice most of that does stay out towards eastern Oregon. A little bit of that wildfire smoke may end up bleeding over into the valleys just a touch, but it shouldn't impact our air quality too too much here over the next few days. We don't really have a good southeasterly push of air to push all of that smoke in our direction.

[00:03:23]But one of the big smoke makers out there is the wildfire, the Rogue Creek complex. Uh here's a look at the conditions over the next 24 hours. Not looking great. Getting breezy by tomorrow afternoon. uh seeing winds up to 10 to 20 miles per hour out of the west northwest. We'll have temperatures well into the 90s, low relative humidity as well. That's all going to add to that fire weather potential. So, you can see here over the next few days, we can see some spikes there through each afternoon, especially on Wednesday.

[00:03:53]There's that chance for even a few uh thunderstorms. So, that is why they have gone ahead and added the red flag warning in places like Bend out towards Burns for that potential. I'll break down the threat of thunderstorms coming up in just a little