Hugo, Ore. — A barn and a cabin are destroyed by a fire that spread to the woods in Josephine County. It happened along Jump Off Joe Creek Road on Wednesday around 5 p.m. That fire eventually spread to nearby wildland and timber.
“A little bit after 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon, we had a small cabin on fire. It basically went fully involved where it went to spread to other buildings including a barn,” said Austin Prince, Rural Metro Fire (RMF) Division Chief.
Prince said the fire eventually spread to nearby wildland and burned close to nearby homes.
“When the explosions went off inside the building they were pretty significant – we had firefighters kind of reeling back from it on occasion,” Prince said.
Structures impacted by the fire are a complete loss, but luckily the homes in the fire’s path were not damaged.
“Fire did travel through all those trees. We call that torching,” Prince said.
Essentially, ‘torching’ is when treats are lit from bottom to top in flames. Some of the trees impacted were as tall as 120 feet.
The five-acre fire took approximately five hours for crews to put out, and around eight other agencies in the Rogue Valley came out to help.
“It’s hard to really do large incidents by yourself,” Prince said.
Which is why RMF is grateful for the relationships it has with other crews in the area.
“Pretty evident for fire departments of today’s era. To realize that you need help. You can’t just have the ego of ‘it’s just all us and it’s just us – we actually have to work together,” Prince said.
RMF said had the wind taken the fire further down the way, it could’ve taken six homes nearby. Fortunately, no one was hurt in this fire. The cause of this fire is still under investigation.
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