The work day had barely started for us at the Enterprise last week when reporter Steven Mitchell spotted information on new wildfires.
A dispatch log showed the BLM had reports of a wildfire in the Bonita area at about 5 a.m. Thursday, July 11, and then two hours later the Cow Valley Fire.
At the time, we were still focused on the River Fire, burning near the Owyhee Dam.
But with high temperatures and tinder dry fuels on the range, we understood immediately that any new fire was trouble for the community.
In such risky circumstances, our small team focuses on one mission: Getting vital safety information out to the community.
In a little more than two hours after Cow Valley was reported, we provided basic details of on our Facebook page, which we treat as a vital community bulletin board.
Soon, it became obvious the Cow Valley Fire was on the move and growing fast. By midday that first day, Mitchell and reporter Pat Caldwell published an online story reporting that fire was already at 2,500 acres. The headline: “Crews continue to battle multiple blazes as dry thunderstorms with “abundant lightning” forecast.”
We dropped all other reporting work to focus on the Cow Valley Fire. Past experience has shown us that in a crisis, misinformation jets around Malheur County via the internet in a hurry. That can put lives at risk. Our immediate duty was to carefully but quickly share information – verified, either from official sources or witnessed directly by our team.
As the fire threatened Brogan that afternoon, Pat traveled from our Vale office out to get on-the-ground information and photos for readers.
The Enterprise is a small news organization, so a major emergency like the Cow Valley Fire is a challenge. But we’ve been in this situation before – with Snowmageddon and the like.
On the Cow Valley Fire, two agencies were especially crucial to our work. The Vale District BLM office served as our prime source for information, work handled ably, professionally and at all hours by Larisa Bogardus, the agency’s public affairs specialist. The Malheur County Sheriff’s Office was our other primary source, with big help from Sheriff Travis Johnson and Rich Harriman, the emergency services director.
We worked from dawn to dark to push out information daily about where the fire was going and who was at risk. We reported promptly when U.S. Highway 26 closed down – we didn’t want unaware motorists driving into a fire zone. Plus, the road had to be kept clear for rapid deployment of fire crews.
We got out word about an evacuation center in Ontario and then evacuation notices that covered a huge area, including all of Vale.
Another key source for us to keep up the flow of timely dispatches was social media. On that first day, the BLM got up a special Facebook page exclusively for fire updates. And people took to social channels to post photos of their own experiences. In instance after instance, people gave us permission to share their photos, whether from the Vale Rangeland Fire Protection Association or from local ranching families still fighting to save their cattle and their livelihoods. We thank them all for photos that documented the scale and danger of what the community faced.
We also got a big assist from Angie Sillonis of Adrian, who takes on photo assignments for us from time to time. She spent hours documenting the devastation, driving as far as the north side of Brogan Hill. Her photos were breathtaking.
In the days the fire was on a tear, we worked hard to get up information before most of you had breakfast. We knew people were anxious to know the latest. Fortunately for us – and for the community – fire officials willingly provided crack-of-dawn assessments and facts.
A key step we took from the first day was to make our stories available to everyone. Normally, only subscribers can read stories we publish on our website and on Facebook. But duty trumps business in such a time. Day after day, thousands upon thousands of people turned to the Enterprise to track the fire and learn the latest.
I am proud that we have the staff to get the information in the first place and proud that the community trusts us in an emergency. That trust we guard jealously.
Readers noticed, such as this one: “Thank you Malheur Enterprise for providing all the free information and pictures of the devastation. Was a huge help to those of us in the middle of this. You gave us that info within minutes so we could make our plans.”
And last Wednesday, this message came to us: “I read the article about the Cow Valley Fire this morning and felt not only informed, but relieved that there is still a newspaper that knows how to report a story with the facts and information pertinent to the subject matter.”
Such remarks mean a great deal to our small team.
We were monitoring the increasing containment of the big fire, trying to catch our breath.
And you know what happened next – another major wildfire roared into Malheur County and marched towards Vale.
And we dug in, pushing out information, sharing evacuation charts, deploying staff.
So, it’s going to take some for us to get our adrenaline flowing at a more normal level.
And then I’ll start toting the costs for nonstop coverage.
As you may know, we’re a family-owned news organization. We don’t have a hedge fund behind us. We don’t have deep-pocketed corporate owners from out of state. We pay our bills with the money we earn from you as a reader and from advertisers.
Now, I have an ask. If you appreciated our coverage and want to be sure we can perform like this in the next emergency, take one of two actions. One, if you don’t subscribe, please do so now – it’s easy to do and can be done securely online. Two, if you already subscribe, contribute what you can to our News Fund to help cover our costs.
Just know, Malheur County, that the team at the Enterprise is here for you in every emergency that tests us all. The Durkee Fire coverage is yet another example of us keeping faith with the trust you all put in us.
Contact Editor Les Zaitz: [email protected]
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