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Wind-whipped wildfires bear down on Glacier, Yosemite parks
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Firefighters across the U.S. West struggled with wind-driven flames, hot temperatures and dry conditions even after the unofficial end to a summer of devastating wildfires, including those bearing down on two popular national parks.
The dozens of fires burning across the Western United States and Canada have blanketed the air with choking smoke from Oregon, where ash fell on the town of Cascade Locks, to Colorado, where health officials issued an air quality advisory alert.
A 14-square-mile fire in Montana’s Glacier National Park emptied its busiest tourist spot as wind gusts drove the flames toward the doorstep of an iconic lodge.
Lake McDonald Lodge, a 103-year-old Swiss chalet-style hotel, sits on a lake as the famed Going-to-the-Sun-Road begins its vertigo-inducing climb up the Continental Divide, making it an endearing park symbol for many visitors.
Fire crews got bad news Monday: The wind had shifted and gusts were driving the fire down the mountainside toward the lake’s shores.
Losing Lake McDonald Lodge on top of the destruction of Sperry Chalet, a historic backcountry building consumed by the fire last week, would be “unimaginably devastating,” said Mark Hufstetler, a historian who worked at the lodge for several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“These are some of the most remarkable buildings anywhere in the United States and they are an integral part of the Glacier experience and the Glacier tradition,” Hufstetler said.
Fire crews understood the significance of the lodge and were ready to protect it, fire information officer Diane Sine said.
“It’s important to all of us and a very high priority to do whatever we can to preserve that,” she said.
Outside California’s Yosemite National Park, a wind-fueled fire made its way deeper into a grove of 2,700-year-old giant sequoia trees on Labor Day. Officials said the fire had gone through about half the grove but had not killed any trees.
Giant sequoias are resilient and can withstand low-intensity fires. The blaze burned brush and left scorch marks on some big trees that survived, said Cheryl Chipman, a fire information officer.
“They have thick bark and made it through pretty well,” Chipman said.
There are about 100 giant sequoias in Nelder Grove, including the roughly 24-story-high Bull Buck sequoia, one of the world’s largest. Fire crews also wrapped 19th-century cabins in shiny, fire-resistant material to protect them from the flames.
The fire threatening the grove was among several in the area — one of which closed some trails in Yosemite. A road leading to the park’s southern entrance also shut down.
Brenda Negley woke up Monday in her Oakhurst home 14 miles away and found her truck covered with ash. Her mother was there, too, after evacuating her own home, but Negley’s thoughts were with the peaceful and secluded sequoia grove that she has regularly visited since childhood.
“I’ve been sick with worry over Nelder Grove,” she said. “As much as Nelder Grove is my home, and I don’t want to lose my home, I want to save my mom’s home and everyone else’s home.”
Elsewhere in Northern California, a fire destroyed 72 homes and forced the evacuation of about 2,000 people from their houses. The fire has burned 14 square miles in the community of Helena about 150 miles south of the Oregon line.
In Los Angeles, a fire that destroyed four homes and threatened hillside neighborhoods is no longer actively burning, but firefighters kept watch in case the wind reignited the blaze, Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas said.
Thanawala reported from San Francisco.
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Dozens of forest fires burn in Oregon, casting pall of smoke
SALEM (AP) — Much of Oregon was wrapped in a haze of smoke this week as dozens of wildfires burned in the state, with one blaze forcing part of an interstate highway to be closed.
In the Willamette National Forest alone, 16 fires covering 71 square miles were burning, officials said. Campfires were banned and a third of the forest was off limits, the forest service said.
In southwest Oregon, evacuations were ordered in a rural area near Cave Junction because of another fire. The current size of the blaze was unknown because heavy smoke has kept infrared mapping flights grounded, fire managers said.
“Smoke levels are creating unpleasant and unhealthy conditions across much of southwest Oregon,” the Joint Information Center said in a statement.
But smoke also filters sunlight, limiting additional heating of potential fuels on the ground and stifling small fires, the center said.
Air quality alerts were issued for several parts of the state. Doctors recommended that anyone with existing pulmonary conditions such as asthma stay indoors.
On the northern end of the state, a fire in the Columbia River Gorge that separates Oregon from Washington state caused ashes to drift onto the town of Cascade Locks. A stretch of Interstate 84 that runs by the town was closed because of the fire, the Oregon Department of Transportation said Monday evening. The highway will reopen when authorities determine that the road is safe.
Evacuation orders remained in place in and around Cascade Locks for 283 structures, including 15 businesses. After quickly spreading since it started on Saturday, apparently from a youngster playing with fireworks, the fire held the same position overnight and is an estimated 3,200 acres.
Native Americans who fish for salmon in the broad Columbia River consider Labor Day their busiest day to sell the smoked fish, but a market where they sell it by the Bridge of the Gods was quiet, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Some hikers on Pacific Crest Trail, which runs through the area, were seen in Cascade Locks and told OPB that fires had prevented them from hiking about half the trail in Oregon.
The fire in southwest Oregon, which has burned more than 219 square miles was also threatening a tree that marks the site of a bombing of the continental United States by the Japanese during World War II, fire management officials said.
The redwood was planted as a symbol of reconciliation over a half-century ago by the family of Nobuo Fujita, a Japanese Navy pilot who dropped incendiary bombs on the forest near Brookings, the Bulletin newspaper of Bend reported.
Firefighters wrapped the redwood in a fire-retardant sheet to protect it, and the flames were believed to be about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away, said Terry Krasko, a spokesman for the firefighters.
Fujita’s two bombs had little effect. He returned to Brookings after the war to apologize.
Saturday was the 75th anniversary of the firebombing. Fujita died in 1997.
Cherries — too much of a good thing
The Pacific Northwest sweet cherry industry finally had the year of its dreams in good weather, but maybe the year of its nightmares in pricing and returns.
Stellar weather this year led to record cherry volume. The crop of around 27 million, 20-pound boxes was well above the old record of 23.2 million in 2014.
But the record crop caused wholesale prices to tumble below $16 per box, making it unprofitable. Early grower returns were good, but post-Fourth of July returns, not fully known until mid-October, are not expected to be good. Some picked fruit was dumped.
So the big question growers, packers, shippers and marketers will grapple with over the next several months is whether the industry can expand market consumption enough to handle 27 million-box and larger crops.
Or are the crops too much of a good thing?
The answer seems obvious. Supply exceeds demand. Cut supply. But it might be more complicated than that.
There are lots of variables that shape any given season. Weather is one of them. Rain, hail, excessive heat or poor pollination usually hold down crop size, but that didn’t happen this year.
“The reality is every cherry season is different, and this one played out in a manner that is unacceptable to me, my growers and shippers,” said B.J. Thurlby, president of Northwest Cherry Growers in Yakima, Wash., the industry’s promotional arm.
Next year, the market might respond differently and there may be more demand than supply, he said. The key is repeat consumer purchases, and this year “our retail partners saw our core consumers did not make as many repeat purchases as we needed,” Thurlby said.
“We had two-and-a-half months of sustaining huge volume, competing with lots of other summer fruit. California had a lot of cherries before us at good pricing and good volume. Why it tanked for us was just supply and demand,” said Denny Hayden, a Pasco, Wash., grower.
It was a tale of two seasons for the Northwest. Pre-Fourth of July brought “good to moderate” prices, and post-Fourth of July brought too many cherries and prices at $16 a box and lower, Hayden said.
“The problem was not having enough sales for it. We couldn’t move out packed fruit,” he said.
PNW cherries were the No. 1 advertised item in retail produce departments for four weeks. They were in the top three for seven weeks against more than 800 other items on average, Thurlby said.
“You hope we picked up some new consumers, which is part of the necessary growing pains we go through in producing larger crops,” he said.
Consumer-friendly retail pricing and good displays were the norm in most stores as major chains focused on cherries for over two months, he said.
More than 500,000 boxes per day were shipped for 42 straight days — an “unbelievable” amount, he said.
Northwest Cherry Growers began new programs in the Philippines, Myanmar and Cambodia and the industry exported more than 8 million boxes. More than 3 million of that went to China. The previous export record was 7.5 million in 2014. Last year, 1.8 million boxes went to China.
“To me the bottom line is there are just too many cherries planted. There’s not enough infrastructure to get them packed. Until the huge supply drains away, it isn’t a good market. It’s a good market early and in the end but not in the middle until we reduce the amount of fruit being picked,” said Norm Gutzwiler, a Wenatchee, Wash., grower.
Brenda Thomas, president of Orchard View Farms in The Dalles, Oregon’s largest cherry grower, said people talk about growing markets but she’s not sure where that is because “certain retailers reached a lot people with low pricing and it still didn’t create enough demand.”
“We packed all our fruit and sold all our fruit for very poor pricing. There was little or no demand for cherries in general. It was that way all season long except right at the beginning,” Thomas said.
Small growers will get squeezed out first if supply is reduced, she said, adding she does the best she can for her growers.
Orchard View packs for a couple dozen growers. Beyond that, it grows 80 percent of what it packs.
Charles Lyall, a Mattawa, Wash., grower, said it’s tough to make a profit this year on $20 per box at a 30 percent cullage rate.
Small growers, particularly 5- and 10-acre growers, are likely to get out of business first because they can’t handle food safety compliance and other regulations as efficiently as large companies, Lyall said.
“I would like to increase markets but if you can’t increase markets fast enough to take care of the volume and can’t sell at a profit, then you have to start looking at reducing production,” he said.
A short-term solution, he said, is heavier pruning to reduce crop load and produce larger cherries. The next option is removing less productive trees and varieties, which he will start doing this winter or next, he said.
Big companies have increased a lot of cherry acreage in the Mattawa area in the past 30 years and a lot of that, with some ups and downs, has been fueled by good prices, Lyall said.
“We’ve been riding that train. We might be back to a point where we’ve overproduced and it’s going to have to go back to lowering volume,” he said. “You tear out Bing at 6 tons per acre and plant Skeena that averages 10. The day of growing small fruit that doesn’t get packed is trouble.”
New varieties that produce large cherries would be good, he said, “but I’m afraid there’s more of these years ahead than in the past.”