Brad Cook photo/The Chronicle, Creswell This image captured Sunday night shows the wildfire, at right, that was ignited by professionally managed fireworks at a Fourth of July celebration simultaneous with the one in Oakridge.
By DOUG BATES/Editor/The Herald — Sunday’s fireworks show in Oakridge was a magnificent crowd-pleaser, there’s absolutely no question about that. But our community was playing with fire.
Creswell showed us that when their Fourth of July pyrotechnics, produced by professionals like those who came to Oakridge, ignited a wildfire that kept firefighters working until 3:30 in the morning. It burned less than two acres of brush and small trees on an old Creswell mill site — hardly any significant damage, so why should anybody care?
Oakridge residents should care — a lot. This isn’t a valley town like Creswell. Oakridge sits in a tinder-dry, heavily forested mountain canyon, much like McKenzie River country. Have you seen it recently?
Huge swaths of it were ravaged in last year’s devastating fire season. The community of Blue River was destroyed.
The people of Oakridge-Westfir need to have a conversation about this. Our climate has changed and so have our woods. We’re in the middle of a worsening, years-long drought.
Is a thrilling fireworks show worth the risk of becoming another Blue River?
The Oakridge City Council had a mini-debate about that last Thursday. Two on the council said no, such a roll of the dice isn’t worth it. But the majority of five said “on with the show.” Some of them asserted repeatedly that because professionals handle the pyrotechnics, they’re safe.
Today, firefighters in Creswell might tell you otherwise.
“Even the pros seem to have trouble avoiding collateral damage,” wrote Chris Pietsch, The Register-Guard’s director of photography, who was there covering the fireworks show in Creswell.
Sunday’s wildfire broke out there at about 10:15 p.m. within 100 feet of the fireworks show. One witness said he saw a dud explosive land where the flames erupted. A chamber of commerce spokesman blamed it on a falling ember.
Whatever the cause, you have to wonder what would have happened had such an accident occurred at the Oakridge fireworks show, held on the edge of a national forest.
Firefighters were on standby in Oakridge, of course. And those in Creswell quickly surrounded that wildfire, although it burned well past midnight.
Unlike Creswell, Oakridge-Westfir is a community packed with forest-fire experts, some of them retired U.S. Forest Service employees. We need to hear from them. The Herald encourages such voices to be heard, through guest columns and letters to the editor of this news site.
Help us make the right decision next summer. Are fireworks shows still safe in Oakridge, or are we courting disaster?
Herald Editor Doug Bates is a retired newspaper journalist who lives in Oakridge.
