Ashland, Ore. – The Hendrix Fire is currently burning about five to eight miles south west of Ashland. Authorities gave the community an update about their new strategy for containing the Hendrix fire.
Since the community meeting on Wednesday, the fire has grown to 830 acres and is only about 10% contained.
“Since that time, all the heavy smoke has actually kept the fire relatively inactive. Because there is an inversion that keeps the smoke down over that fire, so there’s not a lot of wind, there’s not a lot of air movement,” Incident Management Team 12 member, Jeff Bouschor.
This weekend, fire crews will be conducting strategic burn, a counter intuitive approach to fully contain this fire.
“We light fire along that edge and what that does is slowly consumes the fuel back towards the main fire. Basically removing the fuel from the fire, so it can’t continue to spread. we do that in a controlled fashion to secure the fire edge,” Bouschor said.
As the fire creeps closer to Ashland, Fire-Rescue teams say its business as usual, but they’re ready for anything that may come their way.
“Until we get that word we’ll just go on with our normal operations but we’ll continue to monitor the situation.”
Fire officials are encouraging residents to sign up for emergency alerts, and to be aware of the smoke danger that is the biggest problem right now.
© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.