Wildfire has always been a threat to western forest dwellers. Over the last few years there has been an increase in the number of major . . . as in thousands of acres . . . wildland fires.
To us, the off-shoot of most of these conflagrations has been smoke plumes that randomly blanket the spaces we inhabit. We have not had to deal with a direct threat
. . . until this week when we looked out our front door.
Dubbed Darlene 3; because there were two previous fires in the same area, La Pine’s first wildfire of 2024 was reported around noon on Tuesday the 25th.
By dinnertime it had grown to 500 acres and level 3 evacuation orders (“GO NOW”) had been issued to a large number of La Pine residents.
Many of the fire fighting resources concentrated efforts on reinforcing containment away from neighborhoods, and in our case we were grateful they prevented the fire from jumping Hwy 97 (located just past the small forest in front of our home).
For the past couple of days the fire has been sitting at nearly four thousand acres burned, with 40% contained. Thankfully it continues to receive a lot of attention from a wide range of state and local agencies.
All it would take is a shift in wind direction and this wildfire would rise to disastrous levels.
Some area neighborhoods remain at level 3. Luckily, other areas have been downgraded to level 2 BE SET to evacuate.
Winds continue to push east-southeast away from La Pine and our neighborhood. But vigilance and constant monitoring is our best course.
Watch Duty, a free app for computers or smart phones, has been a great help tracking the fire’s progress. The app allows you to identify and track wildfire even really small local burns that other online sources ignore until they are at disaster level.
This is a loop we’d attempted a few weeks ago, but were forced to turn back when we ran into snow covered roads.
