Officials involved in battling the Grasshopper Fire addressed the public at a community meeting on Thursday evening at Dufur School.  Southern Area Blue Team Operations Section Chief Jon Wallace says a major focus of firefighting efforts is to prevent the fire from going into the Tygh Canyon.  He says it’s one of the last pieces of the fire they are very concerned about, because if it moves around, the fire will come out to places they don’t want it to.  Wallace added they will use everything they’ve got to keep it out of the Canyon.  Wallace says line on the northeast section on the fire at Logging Gulch Road is holding, and said a hotshot crew from Texas is working in the Winslow Road area and has made good progress in conjunction with the Petersburg Rural Fire Protection Agency, tying in with local ranchers to tie in line to Friend Road.  He said a tethered logging crew is being brought in to remove snags in the Crane Prairie area, and while Highway 35 is open, there remains danger from falling trees.  Wallace says the Highway 35 corridor is in good shape, as is the northwest and southern edges of the fire.

 

Fire Behavior Analyst John Cook told attendees that the dryness of the fuels in combination with strong winds is the biggest challenge.  Cook says it leads to a high potential of spotting, adding wind is like water, flowing faster downhill.  He says the warm air and smoke goes up in the daytime at the higher elevations, but when it cools off at night the warm air comes down and pushes out.  Cook says they have been seeing cooler temperatures and lower wind speeds the last couple of evenings, so firefighters are able to make progress.