Lightning sparked a fire outside Ironside earlier this month, burning close to 100 acres. (ANGELINA KATSANIS/The Enterprise) VALE – The Vale District of the Bureau of Land Management responded to two lightning-caused wildfires late Tuesday that have since been contained.  The Dug Out Fire, located two miles south of Juntura,[Read More…]

Firefighters manage a burnout operation on the Indian Creek Fire on Thursday, Aug. 20, to help contain the fire. (BLM photo) VALE—The 48,000-acre Indian Creek Fire took $5.1 million, 33 aircraft, half a million gallons of retardant, 398 fire personnel and 13 days to get under control, said Larisa Bogardus,[Read More…]

A Bureau of Land Management fire truck waits in a garage bay at the Vale BLM office. The Vale post is responsible for administering about 5 million acres of land in eastern Oregon. (The Enterprise/Rachel Parsons) ANNEX – Despite winds of 40 miles per hour, firefighters worked through the night[Read More…]

Incident Fire Operations trainee Russell Hamilton of Spokane and the Vale-based Snake River Valley Crew 7 returned a missing calf found on the western end of the Indian Creek Fire, outside of Juntura, to its mother on Sunday. (BLM photo) JUNTURA – In the midst of fighting Oregon’s largest wildfires,[Read More…]

Russell Hamilton, a BLM incident fire operations trainee from Spokane, and a firefighting crew recovered a calf missing on burning rangeland after a local rancher’s herd was evacuated last week. The rancher alerted fire crews on the Indian Creek Fire, northeast of Juntura, that he was one head short. (BLM[Read More…]

Firefighters manage a burnout operation on the Indian Creek Fire on Thursday, Aug. 20, to help contain the fire. (BLM photo) JUNTURA – Smoke from wildfires is hindering the use of aircraft to contain the Indian Creek Fire, a range fire that new mapping shows has burned nearly 50,000 acres[Read More…]