Oregon Public Broadcasting

About a hundred firefighters are working to contain a 1800-acre blaze just south of Sisters.

The fire broke out Monday  sometime before noon.  Since then it’s burned a mostly a sparsely forested area of ponderosa pine and juniper about 6 miles south of Sisters.  

The fire isn’t immediately threatening any structures, but the Deschutes County sheriff's office and the Red Cross have set up a voluntary evacuation site at a local school.

Virginia Gibbons is a spokeswoman with Central Oregon Fire Management Services.  She says 3 air tankers and 3 helicopters are working in tandem with crews on the ground to contain the blaze. 

She says an incident management team arrived Tuesday to help coordinate those efforts.

Virginia Gibbons: “We’re getting geared up and so far things are going well and we’re not anticipating any problems based on the weather but we’ll just have to see how the day goes”

Forecasts call for winds to be around 5 to 8 miles per hour, which Gibbons says should help efforts to contain the blaze. The cause of the fire is still unknown.