Vegetation fire breaks out near North Valley High School

MERLIN, Ore. – Multiple units responded to a vegetation fire behind North Valley High School Sunday afternoon.

Rural Metro said they got a report of smoke in the area of the high school around 3:30 pm.

Firefighters said when they got on scene the fire was already at about a half-acre in size and that four spot fires had begun to pop up. Because of the spot fires and their rate of spread, they upgraded the fire to an alarm 4 bringing in air resources and engines from Medford and Ashland.

Door-to-door notifications were made by Josephine County Sheriff’s Office and Josephine County Emergency Management.

“Sometimes the only thing that’s best for us to do is to go door to door and tell people that there’s a fire and it’s up to you to leave or not. There wasn’t necessarily any formal process initially I think that’s the best we got was a door to door by the sheriff’s department, but it was also precautionary,” Austin Prince with Rural Metro.

Prince said there was not an immediate threat to structures from the fire.

ODF said the fire was estimated at 15-20 acres in size.

There were not structures lost in the fire and no injuries were reported. The cause is under investigation.