05/16/2008

Associated Press

Landowners could be liable for firefighting costs if they are responsible for a blaze that gets out of control and they have not filed a plan to prevent it.

The Oregon Department of Forestry is reminding property owners about regulations after responding to the season's first forest fire this week caused by a runaway debris burn on private land near Unity.

"We had an incident Monday where a guy started a debris pile on fire and it got away," said Keith Shollenberger, assistant forester at the agency's Baker City office.

Shollenberger said the main fire burned about half an acre, and embers from that fire blew across Highway 26 and started a spot fire that burned an area about 5 feet in diameter before firefighters extinguished it.

"The landowner started it with the intent to clean up material from a precommercial thinning," Shollenberger said. "It got away from him and we had to get an engine over there to help him put it out."

He said most human-caused fires happen in spring or fall, often because forest landowners and others wrongly assume the fire risk is low.

Rancher George Hardy said he and his son, Rob, started the fire to burn brush and limbs.

"There was a bunch of limbs and stuff there, and we just started a fire to get it away from the fence," Hardy said. "We had 4 feet of snow up here this winter. The ground absorbed the moisture and it was so wet I never gave it a thought when we lit the fire. I guess that was a mistake."

Because it was early in the season, the ODF fire crew had to come from Baker City, about 65 miles away. During the summer a crew is stationed in Unity.

Hardy said he called ODF because he has worked with them before. In hindsight, he said, he should have called the Unity fire department.

Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, suggested the ODF and U.S. Forest Service officials set dates for the official start of fire season and associated limits on prescribed burns too late this year.

Ferrioli said forests in some parts of Northeastern Oregon are too dry, because of last summer's drought, to allow prescribed burning.

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Information from: Baker City Herald, http://www.bakercityherald.com/