Date: July 31, 2021
Contact: Central Oregon Fire Information Desk, 541-316-7711, [email protected]
Central Ore. – Firefighters will continue to work today to contain the Deep Creek and Johnson Ridge Fires, burning north of Madras under the management of a Type 3 Incident Management Team.
The Deep Creek fire located 21 miles north of Madras, Ore. started on Thursday, is 1,219 acres with 20% containment. The Johnson Ridge Fire located 9 miles northwest of Shaniko, Ore. started early Friday morning and is 772 acres with 20% containment. The Johnson Creek stayed in its footprint overnight. New acreage on the Deep Creek fire will come later today with new mapping.
The Type 3 team and Bakeoven/Shaniko Rural Fire Protection Association (RFPA) will continue to work together on the Deep Creek and Johnson Creek Fires unified in command and sharing resources on both fires as needed.
With very minimal precipitation in the fire area overnight, the Deep Creek fire continued to spread to the north and east. With predicted southerly winds for today, the northern portion of the fire will be the priority area for fire personnel to reduce spread. Work today will consist of getting out ahead of the growth overnight on the north and east sides of the Deep Creek to stop forward spread and continuing to secure the perimeters around both fires.
Internal pockets of tree’s and thicker vegetation are continuing to burn as both fires move through unburned areas within the perimeter. If these internal pockets of fuels threaten to affect containment lines, firefighters monitoring the lines will respond.
Air resources are available as weather allows for the fire today. The fires have hand crews, engines, and dozers operating on the fire. Possible heavy precipitation and thunderstorms are predicted again over the area. Fire personnel were reminded for safety of themselves, their families upon their return home and the communities they are working in to remain vigilant with their COVID mitigations.
A fire camp for the two fires has been established at Madras Elementary school. There are 135 personnel staffing the fires
For current wildland fire information, the public can visit centraloregonfire.org or follow fire information on Twitter @CentralORfire.
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