Constant Fire Watch Tries the Patience of Laid-Back Hamlet

Just when they think the forest fire is quieting, and talk resumes about pulling salmon and steelhead trout from the Rogue River, the smoke roils over the ridgeline once again. Women confide their fears. Men bristle with anger and defiance.

Like a low-grade fever that’s irritating but not debilitating, this fire wears on daily life in southwestern Oregon.

It has been burning for three weeks through the crowded conifers, myrtles and oaks of Siskiyou National Forest.

And for just as long, it has been threatening the 150 residents of this river valley hamlet, accessible from the east by only a steep, serpentine, one-lane road that clutches the mountainside without guardrails, flanked by towering firs and patches of ferns, wild daisies and Queen Anne’s lace.

By Saturday, the Florence blaze had burned through 190,000 acres of trees and untold plots of Oregon’s vaunted marijuana crop, and continued to keep 17,000 residents south of here on evacuation alert. It is one of 11 big fires burning nearly half a million acres in Oregon, shrouding big cities and small towns in acrid, stagnant smoke.

Given some measure of fortune, Agness is mostly upwind of this forest fire, and the sky is usually brilliant blue, so they call it the lurking monster. Stoked by afternoon heat and wind, the fire rears its head from behind the ridgelines, obliterating the afternoon sun with plumes of smoke that turn from white to muddy orange.

The fire dragon creeps to within four or five miles of here, retreats and returns. Its incessant threat is even wearing thin the patience of this particularly laid-back town.

“This is like living in Florida and getting a hurricane watch every day for two weeks,” complained Leo Wright, a Las Vegas businessman who maintains a second home here so he can run his powerful jet boat up the river to relax. “Well, bring on the hurricane and get it over with.”

Corlyss McCullough tries to ignore the smoke as she prepares her family’s legendary fried chicken for the river rafters and jet boat tourists who, despite the fires, continue to come and stop at the family’s bucolic, 80-year-old Lucas Lodge for hearty suppers.

“We just pray to the Lord to give us the winds to push the fire back,” she said. But Friday night the smoke seemed closer than ever, eclipsing the southern sky. “Pray,” she asked.

Postmaster Sandy Stallard has been tracking the fire’s progress through word of mouth.

“It was coming down Lawson Creek, and someone told me that Game Lake burned,” Stallard said. “I’m not sure if it’s reached Nancy Creek or the Indigo. It missed the Briggs Ranch, but it burned the old Connor homestead. And it’s up on the entire ridge above Fishhook.”

She has bundled up family treasures, including an heirloom quilt, for quick escape.

Inside the eclectic Agness Store, where the sign on the wooden screen door perpetually promises “Free beer tomorrow,” owner Gayle Soule gamely greets tourists, who are only slightly fewer in number this summer. They buy Rogue River apple butter and blackberry jam, locally crafted shell jewelry and vintage children’s pedal cars, which Soule’s husband, Tom, has painstakingly restored. But Soule’s mind is elsewhere.

“I’ve had a hard time sleeping,” she said. “When I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I go out on the porch deck and look for the glow.” She’s packed her grandmother’s ceramic rolling pin and the carnival glass fruit bowl with the cranberry edging.

The men who gather at the metal picnic table in front of the store don’t betray such anxieties. “Floods and fires, not a damn thing you can do about them,” said Butch Wood, sipping his afternoon Hamm’s. A flood in ’64 took out two bridges that weren’t replaced, and residents now have to drive eight miles farther to leave town.

“If the fire blows this way, it does. But it won’t,” he said. “Here, have a beer, and don’t worry about it.”

At his nearby home, Bill Scherbarth, chief of the 12-person Agness Volunteer Fire Department, is monitoring news on his scanner and isn’t sure what to make of the fire’s progress as it slowly creeps down the Illinois Valley.

“It could make a run and create its own wind, and could come into Agness tomorrow,” he said. “Or in two weeks. Or not at all.”

There’s ample debate here about how long it would take for the fire to reach Agness. Given the right wind, five hours, one fellow says. Two hours, says another. It’s not coming, a third says.

A simple firefighting plan is in place, if the flames do reach the junction of the Rogue and Illinois rivers where Agness is situated. The strategy means no disrespect to the 1,700 professional firefighters already attacking the blaze on other fronts.

“All the men will stay to fight it, and some of the women too, but some of the other women will have to get out with the children,” said former Curry County Sheriff Allen H. Boice.

Tonya Wood offers another plan of attack, proud of her father’s expertise atop a Caterpillar bulldozer. “Put my dad in a D-8 with a case of beer on both sides of him, and he’ll put that fire out,” she boasted.

There’s more than a little frustration here that the fire wasn’t quickly extinguished after it was spotted July 15 by John Rachor, a local who, everyone is quick to point out, owns 11 Burger King restaurants.

When he had spotted another small fire two days earlier while flying his Husky bush plane to Medford, U.S. Forest Service crews quickly extinguished it. But when he reported this fire, apparently sparked by lightning, there was no immediate response, and the one-acre fire, with four smoldering trees, grew quickly.

“I can’t be too critical of them,” Rachor said of the Forest Service. “They had fires burning everywhere. And even now, some people aren’t too bothered by the fire. But others are nervous wrecks.”

Because of the fire’s growth, a second fire command post was installed Saturday at the nearby coastal town of Gold Beach to focus on the blaze’s northern movement toward Agness.

Friday night, the new incident commander, Kim Martin, drove through Agness to familiarize himself with the lay of the land and to see what evacuation routes were available for residents, just in case. There is just one.

“The fire at this end is starting to become a higher priority. I hope I can get 30 [20-person] crews, more ‘dozers and some aircraft up here,” he said. “I know people are upset there wasn’t more fire suppression efforts earlier. But there are just so many fires burning in the West.

“We’re going to fight this fire aggressively. But what people need to realize is, this fire will burn until snow flies.”

Maybe it will snow in October, residents hope.

In the meantime, the women serve fried chicken and sort the mail and sell Rogue River jams, and men sip their beer and talk about fishing and dare the fire dragon to head this way so they can finally slay it.