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| Above: Members of the Oregon National Guard take refresher wildland fire training before deploying to fires near Crater Lake National Park. |
More than 100 members of the Oregon National Guard are taking wildland fire refresher courses in Salem today. The training at the Oregon Public Safety Academy is prior to the Guard members’ traveling to help with fires in southern Oregon. The Guard members have experience in wildland fires from their mobilization in the busy fire season of 2015.
ODF firefighters have had a busy two weeks aggressively attacking and stopping wildfires all over the state, many of them caused by lightning across much of Oregon. There have also been large fires on lands not protected by ODF. Mopping up the tens of thousands of burned acres is labor intensive and is keeping private contract and inmate crews extremely busy. Guard members will aid the response by helping with mop up operations on the more than 10,000 acres which have burned in and around Crater Lake National Park.
Management of the Blanket Creek and Spruce Lake Fire has been combined with that of several smaller fires to form the High Cascades Complex. It is now being managed by a federal
Incident Management Team.
