Ranchers instrumental in stopping range fire

Clint Fillmore had cut his hay and was preparing to bale it on July 8 when he saw plumes of smoke rising to the south of his Jordan Valley ranch. Within moments he received a call from a rancher whose house was threatened by what became the biggest wildfire to strike Oregon in more than a century. Fillmore, fire supervisor for the Jordan Valley Rangeland Fire Protection Association, and about three dozen other volunteers would spend the next five days trying to harness the Long Draw fire. Gordon Foster, of the Oregon Department of Forestry, said the association was instrumental in stopping the northward spread of a fire fueled by high winds and dry conditions that torched more than 580,000 acres and killed more than 100 cows. Oregon's 14 rangeland fire protection associations often are the first line of defense in fighting wildfires, Foster said, and, in some cases, the last line. "They live there, they work there," Foster said. "It's their homes, it's their livelihood, and they are very interested in keeping the impacts of fire at a minimum. "They could be one to three hours ahead of the Bureau of Land Management responders, and they were in the case of the Long Draw fire," Foster said...more