UPDATE (12:02 a.m.): The Oregon Department of Forestry says the Flounce Fire has grown to 600 acres.
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Jackson County, Ore.- The fire started after a lightning strike. But it didn’t start as just one fire, there were two. And because of the remote location and difficult access to it the fires merged together and became one fire.
Monday evening Oregon Department of Forestry estimated the fire at 50 acres and by midnight it was roughly 180. Tuesday morning it had grown to 250 acres. And now it’s getting larger.
The flames are headed northeast toward the northwestern flank. While firefighters prefer the flames don’t spread the area of the growth isn’t as much of a concern because the direction the flames are headed is away from the homes that got the level 1 evacuation notice.
But Oregon Department of Forestry says that could change at any time if there’s any sort of change in the weather or the way that the wind is moving, firefighters would have a much more difficult time.
In order to help prevent that from happening Oregon Department of Forestry has resources in the sky that include multiple air tankers and aircrafts watching the movement of the flames, and more than 250 people fighting on the ground.
The number of people fighting on the ground will increase Wednesday.
“In the next 24 hours we have a State of Oregon Incident Management team rolling in,” ODF’s Melissa Cano explains. The team is coming in to help increase resources and relieve crews over the course of the time it will take to extinguish the flames. Cano says that doing that will help local fire crews get back to the day to day fight, keeping an eye on other grass fires across the Rogue Valley.
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