Salt Creek Fire now at 3,300 acres, 2% contained

EAGLE POINT, Ore. – The Rogue Valley’s largest fire, the Salt Creek Fire, burning since Sunday afternoon, is growing.

It’s now 3,300 acres.

Crews are hard at work as the Salt Creek Fire continues to burn 10 miles east of Eagle Point.

Overnight into Tuesday, firefighters took advantage of the cooler temperatures to build and improve lines around the fire.

Infrared mapping put the total area of the fire at an estimated 3,300 and it is now 2% contained.

ODF’s Incident Management Team 1 took control of the fire on Monday.

“We bring in a lot of resources and we bring in that logistical planning capacity,” said Bryan Longoria with IMT 1.

A big part of that is too is bringing in a lot of folks so that the local teams that have been doing that initial attack for a couple of days, we want to get them rested we want to get them back on their district so that they can watch out for new starts and ensure that the next fire that starts doesn’t become a bigger fire.

Tuesday, crews focused on holding and securing existing lines and building more where possible.

Increasing winds and persisting triple digit temperatures brought an increase in fire activity early Tuesday afternoon as smoke cleared out of the area.

“That smoke is actually helping us throttle down or choke down the fire a little bit so when it lifts as it did yesterday you might see more of that column rise up out of the fire and essential what happened is the fire is getting more oxygen,” Longoria said.