The lasting impact of the 2020 Oregon wildfires Ash and debris along OR22 from property destroyed by the 2020 Labor Day weekend wildfires. Oregon DOT
https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregondot/50768775008
The summer of 2020 was a time of fire and devastation for much of the Western U.S. The combination of human-caused climate change and pervasive forestry mismanagement created the conditions for August 2020 s thunderstorms to cause record-breaking wildfires across California, Oregon, and Washington (as well as additional fires all across the Western states into September). Because of the many factors torrential winds, hot and dry terrains following drought and logging practices like clear-cutting, worsening storms due to climate change the situation quickly grew into a disaster as individual forest fires connected and turned into megafires and scorched more than 10.2 million acres of land, destroyed more than 10,000 buildings and took at least 37 people s lives. In th
To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.
The frantic wind in Ashland, Oregon, woke me up at 5 a.m. on September 8, 2020, the morning of the fire. For a heavy sleeper whoâs known to set five or six alarms for early mornings, I was surprised that I had been startled by the sound of harried wind chimes outside my window. In retrospect, the unrelenting minor-key clanging of the hollow pipes seems like some kind of omen. But for the next five or six hours, I went about my regular morning routine: coffee, oatmeal, Twitter, work.
Then, around 10 or 11 a.m., the winds guided what became a fierce inferno named the Almeda Fire on a highly destructive path. Fire season always poses a serious threat to Southern Oregonâs Rogue Valley, but no one could have predicted the severity of the Almeda Fire, which primarily affected the towns of Talent and Phoenixâjust north of Ashland. On the following day, FEMA stated that the fire had burned approximately 600 h