It’s official: At midnight on Oct. 22 the last Oregon forest protection district went out of fire season, closing the 2012 season statewide. It was a long one. Eighty-plus consecutive days with no significant rainfall extended wildfire activity well into the fall. The last significant fire occurred on Oct. 18, a 16-acre blaze in the South Cascade District.
On the 16 million acres protected by the Oregon Department of Forestry, it was an average season. Just under 700 fires burned about 17,000 acres. The running 10-year average is 971 fires burning about 21,000 acres.
But 2012 saw plenty of fire on the rangelands of southcentral and southeastern Oregon. At 557,648 acres, the Long Draw Fire rewrote the record book, racing across the high desert to become the largest blaze in Oregon in more than a century.
Nearly as big, the Holloway Fire burned 461,047 acres along the border with Nevada. The fire’s perimeter included some 245,000 acres burned on the Oregon side. Other large range fires contributed to the total of 1.26 million acres burned on all jurisdictions in the state.
Oregon Department of Forestry firefighters, forest landowners and volunteers with the Rangeland Fire Protection Associations teamed with federal and rural fire departments to minimize the spread of these rangeland fires onto private forestlands.