A view of smoke from the fire.
In the days before a lightning storm sparked eight separate wildfires just outside Dorena, Oregon, on July 17, former wildland firefighter Ruger Sanow was on edge.
“Lightning and our dry Southern Oregon summers don’t mix,” says Ruger, a forest engineer at our South Valley tree farm. “The Oregon Department of Forestry had already been fighting other wildfires for weeks, and we knew their resources were spread thin.”
Sure enough, parts of South Valley and neighboring properties were hit by lightning strikes. ODF wasn’t able to send more than a single fire engine at first. The cluster of fires, collectively known as the Lane 1 fire, quickly expanded.
Our South Valley team, along with their counterparts at adjacent landowner Giustina Resources and others in the private sector, jumped in to prevent catastrophic damage.
“Thankfully, after years of training, our internal fire response has become a well-oiled machine,” Ruger says. “We launched into action and called in some backup help. Ultimately, thanks to our teamwork, we were able to protect the vast majority of our property despite the size of the fire.”
Ruger Sanow, forest engineer on our South Valley tree farm in Oregon.
GREASING THE GEARS
In recent years, large seasonal wildfires have become an annual occurrence in Oregon. Western Timberlands has adapted to this reality with robust planning, training and investment in firefighting equipment, including water tender trucks and a helicopter.
“We’ve done a lot of interagency training with ODF and other state firefighting agencies, and many of us had firefighting experience prior to joining Weyerhaeuser,” Ruger says. “We’ve developed a flow that proved essential for our success with the Lane 1 fire.”
It started when Ruger tuned into the ODF’s fire-spotting cameras on July 17 and saw smoke. Around midnight, he joined a few people from the ODF and Giustina Resources to pinpoint the location of the fire in person.
“By 4 a.m. there were several fires within a few miles of each other near our property, so we gathered a team in the office and came up with a gameplan,” Ruger says. “Folks went out to the highest vantage points with company radios and spotted more unlocated fires despite all the fog and smoke. We immediately called ODF and requested dispatch to order our Weyerhaeuser water tenders.”
Brian Spindler and Jay Christensen look at a map while coordinating Lane 1 fire fighting efforts.
GAINING COLLECTIVE MOMENTUM
Within hours, employees and contractors for both Weyerhaeuser and Giustina Resources began lining up bulldozers and bunchers to build a protective fire line with the hope of corralling the fire and keeping it off our properties.
“As private companies, we’re not authorized to fight fires on federal lands, and we have limited capabilities to stop the fire before it reaches our lands while it’s actively burning on other landowners’ property,” says Jason Moon, South Oregon region harvest manager. “We needed extensive coordination with federal, state and private landowners before we could even start to construct fire lines on neighboring property.”
Everyone on the South Valley team helped, whether they were running lunches or coordinating things behind the scenes. Ruger and Brian Spindler, harvest manager, were among a handful of South Valley employees who worked 12- to 16-hour days for an entire month to provide that coordination support. Additional firefighting help came from employees from our Coos Bay, Springfield and Midcoast tree farms, while employees from our Alsea tree farm jumped in to take over their South Valley counterparts’ regular duties, ensuring regular operations didn’t fall behind.
“The whole region pulled together,” Ruger says. “We were getting equipment loaned to us from as far away as Seattle. It really felt like all of Western Timberlands had our backs.”
Company equipment in place to fight the fire.
PUTTING ON A POWERFUL DISPLAY
Additional firefighting help came from members of national firefighting agencies from as far away as Florida and North Carolina. They shared they had never seen a fire response quite like ours before.
“They were blown away by our use of logging equipment, including our tethered logging system, which helped us cut into steep terrain very quickly,” Ruger says.
By the time the fire was contained, it had burned through nearly 26,000 acres, mostly on state and federal lands. That figure includes just 1,600 acres of our property.
“Brian and Ruger were really instrumental in securing the fire line and reducing the acreage burnt, as were some experienced Willamette Valley folks like Nate Meehan and Brett Rowden,” Jason says. “It’s amazing to see what we can accomplish with a really well-defined set of goals and having the right people in the right places.”
