Kassidy Kern, with the Deschutes National Forest, says they've determined a point of origin. "This is a human-caused fire; there was no lightning in the area. You have two causes for a fire: it's either natural, meaning a lightning cause, or you have a human cause. And in this case, you have a human-caused fire." But she tells KBND News it'll likely be a while before more is released. "Even though sometimes we can determine the point of origin very quickly, and determine what that is, now it's a matter of seeing if there was malicious intent and perhaps going after an individual or individuals and pursuing it that way."

 

Kern says the new dispatch center performed just as expected, "Really, the benefit of this, there are very large windows in the front, so our dispatchers can actually see out on the Deschutes National Forest. And, they actually spotted the smoke from here in Redmond. It was just a very easy tie for them to have a very real time look at what was happening. We were dispatching aircraft out of here; we were dispatching engines." Kern says the blaze spread quickly because the Manzanita trees in the area were still dormant from winter and hadn't yet soaked in moisture from the wet spring.