Inside the Aubrey Mountain Fire that scorched ‘out-of-whack’ forests 

In what they describe as “the black,” wildland firefighters moved along wet, ashy ground of the Aubrey Mountain Fire in its final days.

The low hum of a gas-powered pump drew water from Salt Creek into hoses that wrapped around the 30-acre perimeter. Hand crews with axes and shovels hiked 200 feet up stair-stepping elevation to reach hot spots that could still hold smoke or heat under logs, in hollowed trees or in cavities at their roots.

They sprayed water and dug until dust and dirt billowed around them like a well-doused campfire.

“We go after everything until there’s no smoke, no heat,” said Quin Anderson, who has worked on fires in the Willamette National Forest throughout his 21-year career. At the Middle Fork Ranger Station within the forest, he now serves as the assistant fire management officer.

He knows from his own experience as a crew boss that the right mix of wind and fuel coverage is an opportunity for fire to return. Monday’s triple-digit temperatures added another layer to that risk.

It was 104 degrees, a temperature posted on a marquee showed, with Smokey Bear warning of fire danger along Highway 58. The road operated with one lane open as dozers scooped fallen trees — some already down and others felled during the initial attack — off the hillside and onto the pavement to be hauled away.

A few days earlier, the highway closed entirely after several ignitions flared for about a mile just outside Oakridge, prompting the evacuation of a small rural community with residents and their horses.

Helicopters and air tankers flew into the gray and white plumes, dropping water that rippled on impact and bright red retardant that drifted to the ground.

People watched from Ray’s Food Place parking lot in the city limits. For many, it was just another day, loading groceries into their cars before driving off into the evening, or carrying on with their routines, like football practice or dining at local restaurants. 

They’ve seen it before, from nearly the exact location of the Aubrey Mountain Fire — an area where the past has shaped the present so strongly that land managers are trying to return parts of it to what it once was. 

“This is Oakridge for a reason,” said Gabe Wishart, the district ranger with Middle Fork Ranger Station. “We had heavy components of oak savannas and grasslands and cedar and pine forests that had been adapted [to fire] and maintained by native populations for years,” he said, referencing what descendants and historians consider to be centuries of stewardship.  

Disruptions to a fire-adapted ecosystem 

Indigenous peoples, including the Molalla, Kalapuya and Klamath, cultivated the Oakridge area for food, medicine and tools. They understood the oak savannas and camas meadows thrived in low-intensity fire, with roots that grew deeper each season and could survive extreme heat. 

Each fall, they burned the land to keep tall grasses from taking over, sustaining their way of life while keeping wildfire away from them. They often didn’t put those wildfires out, because they were part of the natural rhythm in the ecology.  

Those practices ended when Indigenous people were forcibly removed from the landscape. In their absence came federal policies that mandated fire suppression and logging projects that cut old-growth trees for harvests and plantations. 

At Aubrey Mountain, those projects left forests densely stocked with Douglas fir, the crowns touching and thick vegetation crowded at the trunks.

“We have an excess of biomass on the landscape right now for a variety of reasons: 110 years of fire suppression,” Wishart said, beginning a long list that ranged from 20th-century forest practices to hotter, drier conditions under climate change. “It’s just kind of out of whack with what it should be.”

Proactive work helped limit Aubrey Mountain’s burn

Nearly 28,000 acres of that off-kilter land keeps burning. In recent years, that’s included the Kwis Fire that was part of the Middle Fork Complex in 2021 and then the 40-acre Salmon Creek Fire in 2022.

For members of the Southern Willamette Forest Collaborative — a community-based organization that brings together industry groups and land managers — the nearby fires were a wake-up call. In 2023, they launched a project to develop treatment areas in three pods: Dead Mountain, Aubrey Mountain and Kitson Ridge. 

The strategy is to create a buffer that can slow or stop fire from reaching the city while restoring the land by thinning the forest through prescribed burns and cutting some trees to add space between remaining trees. 

“Wildfires continue to threaten community safety,” Sarah Altemus-Pope, the collaborative’s executive director, said in an email. “It is important to work together to reduce fuel loading on both Forest Service and private lands.”

Through interagency coordination, they are building on efforts that have thinned nearly 300 acres of Dead Mountain. Additionally, this spring the Oregon Department of Transportation spent nearly four weeks removing diseased and dying trees where the most recent fire sparked. 

“While the Aubrey Mountain Fire did burn there, we believe the reduced fuel load likely kept the fire from burning hotter and spreading faster,” said Mindy McCartt, spokesperson for the ODOT region that oversees Lane County. 

But McCartt added a cautionary note: The $350 million shortfall facing the transportation agency has jeopardized proactive projects like this.

Other budgets, particularly those with federal dollars, and their impacts remain unclear to the public. Earlier this year, the Forest Service laid off 2,000 employees. Nearly 500 jobs were estimated to have been lost in Region 6, which covers the Pacific Northwest. No figures have been released for the Willamette National Forest.

Lookout Eugene-Springfield asked how many jobs have been reinstated locally but was referred to the agency’s Portland press office, which provided only a generic statement that the Forest Service met its hiring goal of 11,300 wildland firefighters ahead of schedule this year.

It was not specified if the jobs were seasonal. Elected leaders and policy groups have criticized the loss of experienced, full-time staff who supported fire prevention — the kind of maintenance that helped keep the Aubrey Mountain Fire small.

Availability of firefighting resources

In addition to several years of work, the availability of resources also played into the success of the Aubrey Mountain Fire response, Anderson and Wishart told Lookout Eugene-Springfield. With fewer fires burning so far this year compared to recent years, crews were able to preposition air and ground resources for a rapid, aggressive attack. 

Last summer, the lightning-sparked Willamette Complex Fire burned near Oakridge for weeks. Once it got established in the steep, forested terrain, its footprint grew quickly, straining firefighting capacity.

Thursday, in the skies, the full response included four helicopters, two air tankers and a surveillance plane. On the ground, 13 engines, three bulldozers, a water tender, three hand crews and other support staff. 

Nearly 100 firefighters responded on the ground, including U.S. Forest Service crews, Oregon Department of Forestry crews and a contracted hand crew. 

Of the firefighters on the ground, more than half are from the U.S. Forest Service, with the others from the Oregon Department of Forestry and contractors. Local firefighters from stations like Oakridge Fire and EMS also supported the fire line. 

Since then, crews have contained the fire to an estimated 75 percent as of Tuesday afternoon.

The cause of the Aubrey Mountain Fire is still unknown. Future fires could be sparked naturally, such as by lightning, or by people in the heavily visited Willamette National Forest.

If a big fire does break out, one advantage now is time. While compounding conditions, including drought, are stacking up in the southern Willamette Valley and pushing the region into a volatile stretch of summer, fall rain could be just six weeks away.

It’s why, as they get into the latter half of the season, coordinators like Anderson are still staying sharp and ready for anything, though, he said, “We’re running the clock out.”

This story has been updated to clarify references to forest management practices.

Reporting for this story was made possible with a fellowship from the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.