Looking to move here in the future, but concerned about wildfires (Ashland: apartments, landscaping)

[Silverfall]

So I can only speak for the wildfires in Marion county as I'm not really following rest of the state.

1) This area is not normally impacted by fires since the winds blow from the coast to eastern Oregon so they take the fires away from the cities. What is happening in my area is unusal because the winds are going to wrong direction and they are serious gusts. This is rare event. In my 21 years in Salem, I have only smelled smoke from local fires and the fire at Silverfalls that was last year or the year before. That was a lightening strike. The Jefferson wilderness tends to have a fire every year, but it doesn't blow this way.
2) The Lionheads fire was caused by a lightening strike. The Beachie Creek/Santiam fire was caused by trees being blown down taking power lines with it.
3) We also have a bunch of arsonists excited to set fires and they are going around setting fires as well. I know an arrest was just made outside Oregon city for one set or arsonists.
4) Colorado just had a huge wildfire as I had to drive through the smoke to take my son back to college at the end of August.

There is no utopia where all the decent human beings of the world live. So for my area, this is a highly unusual event. Southern and eastern oregon get fires pretty much every year, but the whole valley along the I-5 corridor is in new territory.

[leastprime]

^What level for evacuation is the Silver Falls area?
Mollala is level 3 evacuation. Canby and OC is level 2, at 1800hr

[leastprime]

Originally Posted by Nell Plotts

My father used to tell me about the Tillamook Burn where the state would grab adult males out of their cars to conscript them to fight the fire. When I was a kid you could get a day out of school to plant trees in the burned area.

Under current conditions a wild fire can start by accident: a passing train puts out a spark from its wheels, the undercarriage of a car catching dry grass are two well known causes.

The fire referenced above evidently started in the vicinity of the BMX park in Ashland. It may have been arson, a body was found nearby yesterday. All of the vegetation is very dry and combustible, if an excellarant was used the fire would have grown very fast. Perhaps a fire started to cover a murder?

I remember in the 50s, it was Trustees, Loggers and lumber mill workers, Forestry from OSU and other males from UO,OSC,WOSC, Eagle Scouts, and then old town men from the shelters. The NatGuard was somewhere in this, but Camp Rilea is near the woods.

[Silverfall]

Originally Posted by leastprime

^What level for evacuation is the Silver Falls area?
Mollala is level 3 evacuation. Canby and OC is level 2, at 1800hr

Silverfalls State Park is on fire so the whole park is cleared of people and closed. Scotts Mills was evacuated already and Silverton is a Level 2.

[Metlakatla]

Originally Posted by Silverfall

So I can only speak for the wildfires in Marion county as I'm not really following rest of the state.

3) We also have a bunch of arsonists excited to set fires and they are going around setting fires as well. I know an arrest was just made outside Oregon city for one set or arsonists.

Not sure where you're getting your information (do you have a link for the set of arsonists arrested in OC?), but here's what LE in other parts of the state have to say about the arson rumors.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/ver...1-982b904c5545

The Sweet Creek fire by me was started by an arsonist, but he was a local with mental health issues and not affiliated with "antifa." The one in Ashland is still under investigation but looks like it was could be arson.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ac8_story.html

[leastprime]

Wow, Silver Creek on fire. Late fifties, I did YMCA camps. The screened cabins were tinder then. I wonder if they were ever replaced? Learned to take a cold shower real quick, military style.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by leastprime

And how are you and Myrtle Creek doing?

Benefiting from low wind speed. The Umpqua Valley has the lowest average wind speed of any location in North America. The 30-50 mph winds up the North Umpqua were 9 mph by the time they reached the valley. The fire headed toward Sutherlin until it ran out of air. Yesterday morning the air was dead still at my place.

Like all Oregon forest fires, these will burn until the autumn rains put them out. Containment is the problem, and crews will be building fire lines and setting backfires for weeks.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by NW4me

What are peoples' thoughts on the Almeda fire?

It happened in a place that wasn't rugged terrain, or wilderness, or difficult for firefighters to access.
It happened in the relatively flat Rogue Valley floor, in a landscape of farms and towns,
easily reached via I-5. Yet the firefighters couldn't stop it before it destroyed much of Talent and Phoenix,
and kept on going toward Medford.

When the wind blows, nothing stands in front of a wildfire. They are lucky a fire didn't start in East Portland. It could have run for miles through residential neighborhoods, like the Oakland fire did in California.

[Hawk J]

Thursday afternoon Sept 10, KDRV.com (NEWS)
KDRV 12 Camera crew was allowed a drive through following LE along the main road through Phoenix & Talent. It shows much of the fire devastation to businesses & homes along this route. Some buildings were spared. Many were totally destroyed.
My heart aches for all the folks who live in fire areas.
Scroll to bottom of following page for latest Video
https://www.kdrv.com/
https://www.google.com/search?source...4dUDCAk&uact=5

[MovingForward59]

Originally Posted by potanta

I'm 22M and I am from NJ and I recently moved to California. My cousin and I are the typical Californian exodus people who want to eventually flee out of here for the usual reasons, too crowded, too many wildfires, climate sucks, too expensive, you know. I'm an IT major who graduated and I am going to be building up experience my resume for the next couple of years while living here in my grandparents' house and my cousin is building up experience on whatever she does and eventually wants to move out here.

I'm reading the news about the wildfires and I absolutely can't believe most of the things the news says, because they constantly exaggerate like saying "hundreds of thousands of people". We see lots of smoke here, but my grandparents' house is still standing and the main part of the Bay Area never gets hit by wildfires. It's more the interior portions of the Bay Area. So does every semi-rural or non-crowded town in the West get burned down? It seems like crowded places or concrete jungles are not prone to wildfires. I really wanted to consider moving to Oregon in the future (for the sake of spaciousness out here), but I am worried about wildfires. It seems like the West Coast itself rather than "West" is more prone to these problems. I'd rather be dealing with the September snow in Colorado and worrying about car pileups than fires. All you have to do is shovel snow and life goes back to normal the next day, that's what I miss about living in NJ. Nothing natural could ever destroy the East.

Your best & safest bet would be the Midwest. You won’t have wildfires or major earthquakes & everything is much more affordable here along with being less crowded.