OREGON: Red Tiger

In 1933, the great Tillamook forest fire in northwestern Oregon licked up 10,500,000,000 feet of standing timber, enough to supply Portland’s sawmills for 20 years. Despite that loss Oregon is still the leading lumber State, still has the nation’s largest remaining stands of commercial timber. Last week the No. 1 lumber State, parched by weeks of hot weather, was on fire again in the worst blaze since Tillamook. At Saddle Mountain, at Wolf Creek, at Dutch Canyon, west and north of Portland, palls of smoke and ash hung over the rough country, thousands of men manned the lines with hoses, axes and bulldozers as the red tiger of the forests once more devoured Oregon’s natural wealth.

There are only two things to do when a forest fire gets out of hand: run for your life or dig in. In the Dutch Canyon region, Brothers George, Cliff and Art Kittleson and an employe called Smoky saved their lives by scooping a deep hole, burying themselves all but their faces, lying there for seven hours while the holocaust passed over.

Week’s end came and still no rain fell on northwest Oregon (where annual precipitation is normally 43.17 in.). Fitful breezes made the flames doubly capricious and dangerous. Roads were closed, armies of volunteers set backfires to head off the destroyer. In Washington, the red tiger rambled from the rough hills 45 miles north of Spokane on to the east and south, eating deeply into resort towns in the Liberty Lakes country, finally jumping the border into Idaho, where 1,500 men fought the flames at Spirit Lake. With more than 200,000 acres burned & burning, the fire strode on daily toward Tillamook’s record of 267,000 acres in 1933.