On Monday morning, September 7, the Beachie Creek Fire had burned 776 acres in the Opal Creek Wilderness of the Willamette National Forest. The fire was in a steep, inaccessible landscape, so the Forest Service had been fighting it mainly by dropping water from helicopters.
Dropping water on the Beachie fire on September 2, when it was supposed to be only 23 acres in size. Click image for a larger view. Forest Service photo.
Monday afternoon saw winds as high as 75 miles per hour blowing burning embers from the fire miles to the west. Over the next ten or so hours, the fire burned an average of three acres per second, growing to 132,450 acres. Residents of Gates, Mill City, and Mehama who had gone to sleep knowing they were comfortably 4 to 7 miles from the fire front were awakened and hastily evacuated in the middle of the night. The now-renamed Santiam Fire destroyed hundreds of homes and killed at least two people. Continue reading
