Oregon Department of Forestry's (ODF) Northwest Oregon Fire Protection District will enter wildfire season on Thursday, July 8. Entry into fire season imposes certain restrictions on work activities in the forest. Industrial operations are required to have firefighting equipment on site.
The Northwest Oregon Fire Protection District includes the Astoria, Forest Grove and Tillamook districts.
Oregon experienced an unusually wet spring this year. But seasonal weather patterns have begun to take hold, and fire managers expect to see a rise in fire activity in the weeks ahead.
On the lands protected by the Department of Forestry statewide, the 10-year average is about 1,100 wildfires burning a total of just under 27,000 acres. In a typical year, about two-thirds of the fires are caused by people and the remainder by lightning. Of the human-caused fires, fewer than half are caused by forest landowners and operators. Across all Oregon forest protection jurisdictions, about 2,600 wildfires burn roughly 239,000 acres annually on average.
Through July 7, 12 lightning-caused fires have burned about two acres on lands protected by ODF. During that period, 90 human-caused fires burned about 75 acres.
The Oregon Department of Forestry provides fire protection to 15.8 million acres of private and public forestlands statewide, including 2.8 million acres of federal Bureau of Land Management lands. There are about 30.4 million acres of forest in Oregon.
For more information on the restrictions imposed by the fire season declaration, contact the nearest Oregon Department of Forestry office. Contact information for the Astoria, Forest Grove and Tillamook district offices can be found at: www.oregon.gov/ODF/offices.shtml.
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