Gov. Kate Brown said Monday that with wildfires still burning, she is grateful for help pouring in from around the nation and Canada.
One week into the wildfires, “our state has been pushed to its limits,” necessitating the outside help, Brown said.
Brown said 10 people were people confirmed dead from fire-related causes. After her news conference, Jackson County officials said two of the five bodies found related to the Almeda fire were determined to be remains of animals, lowering the state’s known death count to eight.
Twenty-two people have been officially reported missing and are unaccounted for, Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management.
North Dakota and Michigan are among the states that have sent entire crews to Oregon to battle fires. “Scores” of emergency workers from FEMA are on the ground in Oregon, she said. And the National Guard is providing 250,000 N95 masks for agricultural workers and tribal members affected by wildfires, she said.
She said she wrote to President Donald Trump on Sunday detailing the reasons Oregon needs the statewide emergency declaration, which Trump granted last week.
Brown said fire fighting leaders have told her “they are optimistic that cooler weather coming toward end of this week will be a tremendous help.”
The strong east winds that fueled the fires and spread them rapidly through canyons and ravines stretching from the Cascade Mountains toward Interstate 5 have ended, Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry, said at the briefing. “This gives us a lot of opportunity to make progress.”
He said firefighters from private, city, state, regional and federal sources and agencies have combined to make a huge amount of progress in just four days.
There are 5,600 people deployed to work on his agency’s 11 incident management teams at the states largest fires, including some National Guard personnel, Grafe said.
The state fire marshal’s office is also helping coordinate the work of more than 300 local Oregon fire departments helping with the response, he said.
In addition, the Forestry Department has hired 600 additional seasonal workers who stand ready to fight new small fires.
But winds in south central Oregon, particularly affecting the fire burning near Paisley, are still preventing fire containment efforts, he said. And he asked all private parties to keep drones “on the ground" in the areas around fires so that planes and helicopters can join in firefighting efforts.
Thursday’s forecast thunderstorms are expected to dampen fires and help with containment, he said.
He said that containment lines are being established around the whole Holiday Farm fire along the McKenzie River. He hailed “tremendous help from local forest owners.”
Brown said she will likely call the Legislature into a third special session of 2020 in November or December, after the election is over. She suggested housing relief for those who lost homes in the wildfire could be one item on the agenda.
A heavy share of people showing up in Oregon emergency rooms are reporting asthma-like symptoms due to the hazardous air conditions, said Gabriela Goldfarb, environmental public health manager at the Oregon Health Authority.
She said pregnant women, children, elderly people and those with respiratory conditions are particularly vulnerable to serious effects from the smoke-laden air.
Brown and others encouraged Oregonians who can afford to do so to donate to the Red Cross.
Brown also used the fires to call for dramatic changes to lessen climate change.
“These fire raging across the West are a wake-up call that we have to address climate change,” she said.
She also reminded Oregonians she had helped broker an important agreement between timber industry representatives and environmentalists that got scuttled when so many lawmakers walked out during the February legislative session that all bills died. She did not specify what most Oregonians already know: Republicans were the ones to walk out.
The Oregon National Guard expects to begin flying helicopters with water buckets at the fire near Lakeview in southeast Oregon in the next 24 hours, said Adjutant General Michael Stencel.
Newly promoted State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple and Phelps thanked teams from Minnesota and many other states for sending personnel to help with wildfire impacts.
-- Oregonian/OregonLive Politics Team; @OregonianPol