The Silver Fire

 This fire started 33 years ago.  The recovery project to salvage log afterwards was more intense than trying to suppress all the fires around the Silver Fire, including the Galice, Longwood and others I don't remember the names of.

Not sure how many of you retired FS people were on these fires.

                                                   THE SILVER FIRE

 

In the late summer of 1987 a dry lightning storm moved across northwestern California and southwest Oregon.   It had been a dry hot summer and fires were reported all across the Klamath National Forest in California and the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon.   Fire crews were dispatched to many of the communities in the Illinois Valley to protect life and property from what was called the Longwood Fire.   With many other fires burning across the west there was a lack of resources to cover all the fires.   There was no major initial attack on fires burning in the back country.  This included much of the roadless area east of the Illinois River in the Indigo and Silver Creek drainages.   The only initial attack on what was called the Silver Fire was smoke jumpers being dropped into the fire area.   They no sooner landed then they had to hike out because of safety concerns as the fire exploded out of the Silver Creek drainage into the Indigo Creek watershed.  The use of aircraft was limited due to all the smoke. 

Many of us non-fire District personnel and Zone 2 engineering people from Gold Beach were sent to the Longwood fire camp near Cave Junction to provide support in the transportation section.   We spent two weeks driving trucks, delivering supplies, fire tools, lunches and water to crews on the fire lines.    Due to a lack of vehicles the Forest Service even rented U-Haul trucks.   We used many of these trucks to move equipment and supplies to a spike camp being set up at Bear Camp.   The National Guard was also helping out, but their Humvees were so wide it was hard to get by them on some of the narrow forest roads.  

During our entire stay there we never saw the sun because of the dense smoke.   All we could see was an orange ball during the day.   Some residents near the community of Takilma were desperate for fire suppression help to save their crop of marijuana.   At times we could get a smell of it burning along some of the roads through that area.   In short many of these fires burned until the Fall rains arrived and extinguished them.  

Then came the recovery project.    Before the smoke even settled Congress was putting pressure on the Forest Service to estimate the amount of timber that might be available for sale.   In many ways, mostly through lobbyists, it was the timber industry wanting to gain access to the timber in the roadless area since the environmental community had been fighting to keep it roadless for years.   Foresters and engineers were detailed in from other Regions to help out with the planning and layout of these salvage sales.     I ended up working with a forester from Montana surveying the burned timber in the Indigo Creek drainage.   This involved hiking from the end of an existing road coming in from the north off the Burnt Ridge Road.   We spent days hiking through large stands of old growth forest that had been completely burned.  These were some of the biggest Douglas-fir trees I have ever seen.   In places we estimated 80 to 100 thousand board feet per acre.   That would be equivalent to 10 to 15 truck loads per acre of mostly three log loads.    Crossing Indigo Creek involved using a bosun’s chair rigged on a cable crossing the stream.   As winter storms started arriving it was common to hear the falling of burned trees off in the distance.   A camp consisting of some wall tents, cots, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and utensils was set up on a flat between Indigo Creek and the Silver Peak ridge for timber and engineering crews to stay at while working long periods of time locating unit boundaries and proposed road locations.    During a period of time when the camp was not used bears invaded the camp helping themselves to some food and dragging the sleeping bags from the tents and using them for beds.  They did very little damage.

Engineers surveyed different proposed road locations and a possible sites for constructing a bridge crossing of Indigo Creek.   They concluded it would very expensive, involving full bench construction due to the steep side slopes.    Over time environmental groups, such as Earth First, became aware of what was happening on the ground and when Forest Service personnel were not in the vicinity they would remove flagging used to locate unit boundaries and road locations.   Some logging equipment on a nearby Forest Service timber sale was sabotaged by this group doing much damage to their yarder by putting gravel in the transmission.   The logger was allowed to put up a gate with a combination Forest Service lock and his lock.   He also wanted to put killer dogs on the sale area which was not agreeable with the Forest Service.

In the end, no roads were constructed across Indigo Creek.  Roads were extended from the existing roads on the north side of the creek and the timber south of the creek was removed by helicopters to landings to the north.   When this was implemented I had transferred to the Cottage Grove District on the Umpqua National Forest in the spring of 1988 to be closer to family living in Eugene.  In the summer of 2002 most this area burned again in the Biscuit Fire, the largest fire in the history of Oregon.