Oregon Public Broadcasting

There are nearly a thousand people working in various capacities at the Rooster Rock Fire, just south of Sisters.   As the fire continues for a fifth day, firefighters are finally seeing some progress.  David Nogueras reports.

In it’s first four days, the Rooster Rock fire grew daily.

It was a thousand acres on Monday.  It nearly tripled in size on Tuesday growing to 2700 acres. By Wednesday evening it was estimated at 4500 acres and by Thursday afternoon the fire had grown to 6000 acres. 

But Heather Fisher, a spokeswoman for Central Oregon Incident Management Team says fire crews may have finally reached a turning point.

Heather Fisher: “Yesterday was a good day, almost what we’d call a pivotal day where they were able to hold what they had and the fire didn’t grow didn’t grow, maybe just a little bit. But it did stay within the containment lines.  So that’s very good especially with some of the winds that we had yesterday.”

Fisher says firefighters successfully started fires on the inside of the perimeter to consume unburned fuels on Wednesday. That  provided crews with a buffer zone to safely reinforce their fire lines.

Forecasters are predicting temperatures above 80 degrees Friday with wind gusts up to 25 miles per hour.

Fisher says  that’s not ideal weather for fighting fire. But those conditions are similar to yesterday. Crews on the ground, she says are hoping they’ll continue to make progress Friday.

Rooster Rock Fire Incident Updates