Oregon wildfire season has blazed past all records, with no end in sight

On recent days in Prineville, smoke from the nearby Rowe Creek Complex wildfire feels “thick enough to cut with a knife,” said Beverly Friesen, an 81-year-old grandmother.

For the first time in over 40 years, she had to evacuate, leaving her one-story, two-bedroom home, which held so many memories of her late husband and the children they raised.

“My husband had just passed away two years ago, and it was god-awful,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if I had lost my home.”

Thankfully, Friesen was able to return. Some of her friends, she said, still fear they will lose their homes.

The 374,000 acres burned by the Rowe Creek Complex, which forced Friesen and thousands in central Oregon to flee for their safety, are only a fraction of the record-breaking wildfires raging in Oregon this summer.

As of Aug. 10, more than 1,400 fires of all sizes have consumed more than 2.3 million acres across the state — an area far larger than the once-record 2024 fire season at its completion. That is more acres than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

Peak fire season in Oregon is usually in August and September. But this year, large, fast-moving fires started in early July, aided by a low snowpack, widespread drought and persistent lightning strikes.

Fire season has become progressively worse since 2013, said Jessica Neujahr, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

“It’s looking like the fire activity that we’re currently seeing will continue as we move through the season,” Neujahr added.

The largest fire as of Aug. 12 was the Big Grass Fire, which scorched more than 500,000 acres spanning the southern end of the Idaho-Oregon border. It is only 36% contained.

Neujahr said lightning strikes — which ignited the Big Grass Fire and over 7,000 other fires in the past 25 years — are “going to come, whether we like it or not.” But human-caused fires, which made up 73% of all fires from 2000 to 2025, according to the Department of Forestry’s data dashboard, need to be prevented, she said.

“Our resources are spread extremely thin, and one extra one is just too much,” she said. “It puts strain on an already overwhelmed system.”

Currently, Oregon has more than 9,000 personnel fighting fires, but lacks the support it would normally get from other states at this time. Similarly, Neujahr said, federal support is limited.

Oregon Department of Forestry has been forced to change strategies to keep firefighters safe because some fires expanded too rapidly for an aggressive initial attack to keep the fires as small as possible, she said.

“The fire behavior this year is extreme and, in a lot of scenarios, unsafe.” Instead of direct attacks, Neujahr added, crews create barriers and backfires to try to halt the spread.

One firefighter, 47-year-old Jason Ensign, died recently while fighting the Wrights Spring Fire near Klamath Falls in southern Oregon.

The 2026 record-breaking season should be considered part of Oregon’s new normal, Neujahr said.

“It’s changing the mindset to: This is the hand we’re dealt right now, and we have to adapt to meet it.”