Oregon and Climate Change: The Age of Megafires in the American West

Abstract

OREGON’S LABOR DAY WEEKEND wildfires of September 2020 dwarf my experiences as a crew foreman for the Eastern Lane Forest Protective Association in the 1960s. The fires we fought were small, five to twenty-five acres — our responsibility, respond quickly to contain the blazes. During the 1967 season, we fought a fire that started along the McKenzie River Highway 126, burning through steep cliffs on the north side of the road into the forest. Although it burned through difficult terrain, our crew held the fire to less than 100 acres. The 173,393-acre Holiday Farm fire that roared through the McKenzie Valley in September 2020 turned that 1967 incident into a mere flame. Those summer experiences, while working toward a doctorate in history at the University of Oregon, marked the beginnings of a career-long intellectual and scholarly journey, learning about fire history and policy. During the mid 1970s, I began teaching environmental history at Oregon State University (OSU), broadening my understanding of the importance of fire in sustaining healthy landscapes. With the publication of Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800–1940 in 1997, I extended my knowledge of the history and politics of wildfire. The essay that follows foregrounds evidence about climate change, a theme that did not surface in my writing until the late 1990s.1 The alerts — via radio, television, and cell phones — came with a rush on Labor Day, September 7, 2020. Red Flag warnings alerted citizens in Oregon, Washington, and northern California of hurricane-force east winds (blowing from the east) and the escalating danger of wildfire ignition and spread. On the Oregon Coast, the online Tillamook County Pioneer alerted residents of dangerous east winds and the closure of the nearby state forest. Public-use restrictions were moving to “Extreme,” the site announced, referring to a National Weather Service briefing that catastrophic winds were expected on Monday afternoon. Similar Red Flag alerts extended to fire-prone California’s Berkeley Hills and Nevada County, northwest of Lake Tahoe. The National Weather Service described the meteorological phenomenon: