Wildfire official Eric Hendrickson says the hard work by Firefighters over the past week has strengthened fire lines, “we have increased containment percentage up to 27%. That’s due to a lot of the work that we have performed over the last few days with favorable conditions.”

Hendrickson says favorable weather conditions allowed firefighters an opportunity to reduce risk to firefighters and get the area open to the public sooner, “we’ve got a lot of the hazards and fire line strengthened. This would actually help increase that percentage. That’s just a reflection of the hard work that’s been going on the past 3 to 4 days,” adding they are keeping an eye on the long-range weather forecast, “we’re always looking at that and taking it into consideration. That is why you will see a lot of these numbers increase slowly and not too quickly and overconfident for the potential that some of these weather systems can bring in.”

Warm, dry, breezy weather is expected through the weekend with the potentially most challenging combination of wind and low humidity occurring Saturday.  

Closures: The Deschutes National Forest and Willamette National Forest both have closures and fire restrictions in effect. Some of these closures will remain in effect until areas that have been heavily impacted by the fire are surveyed for safety hazards. Please visit Willamette National Forest and Deschutes National Forest for the most recent closure orders and maps.