Bootleg Fire: They dodged the flames pushed by 30mph winds. Oregon teams are still trying to bring the massive blaze under control

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“We had a treetop fire going on, which meant the fire hit the treetops and was blown by the wind” moving at 30 mph, firefighter Eric West told CNN. “We all had to use our escape routes and retreat to a safe zone.”

West and other firefighters spoke to a CNN crew in southern Oregon on Thursday about the dangers of fighting the Bootleg fire, which has consumed more than 400,000 acres and turned into the most large active fire in the country since the beginning of July 6.

Growth in the wildfire slowed over the weekend, in part due to a change in humidity and lighter winds, and it was contained at 40% by Friday morning, according to InciWeb, a center of US exchange of information on forest fires.

But dry wood and grass should fuel the fire for some time to come, and firefighters won’t appreciate what might happen when the gusts pick up.

“The fire made us back down quite often,” West said of the blaze that swept through the Fremont-Winema National Forest well east of Medford.

West and his team were in an area where they had to clean up one-off fires on Thursday. Another firefighter on the scene, Dixon Wesley Jones, told CNN he was also in a situation where he also had to retreat about a week ago.

“It looks like a train, almost,” he said of the oncoming flames. “It looks like something crashing through the forest.”

Adding to the concerns of firefighters in recent days: the fire had been so large and volatile that it was creating its own time.
It formed pyrocumulus clouds, created when the extreme heat from the flames of a forest fire forces the air to rise rapidly, condensing and cooling any moisture on the smoke particles produced by the fire. .

These clouds can act like thunderstorms, with lightning and strong winds, and they can put firefighters at risk.

A pyrocumulus cloud caused by the Bootleg Fire drifts north of a fire base of operations in Bly, Oregon on July 15.

“It is breaking up, but it is breaking up much more violently than a typical rainstorm, and the winds are coming down to the ground,” said Joe Tone, responsible for the Bootleg Fire incident. “The winds are going in all directions, and they could be 30, 40, 50 mph.”

This pushed the flames beyond containment lines during this blaze, sending firefighters back to safe areas and “starting a new plan.”

“I’ve never been on a fire that has had as many pyrocumulus developments and collapses as this one,” Tone said.

Firefighters extinguish hot spots in an area severely affected by the Bootleg Fire near Bly, Oregon on July 19.

More than 80 major fires burn in the United States

The climate crisis has made deadlier and more destructive forest fires the new normal. And Oregon Governor Kate Brown cited recent fires, ice storms, record high temperatures and droughts as evidence that climate change is impacting her condition.
The historic drought of the West in 3 maps
The Bootleg fire was one of 83 large fires that burned Friday in 13 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Together, they destroyed 1.36 million acres of American land, and nearly 22,000 firefighters and support personnel gathered to fight them, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Idaho is home to most of the major fires, with 23; Montana followed with 17.

Hundreds of more fires are burning in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where a state of emergency was declared this week.

CNN’s Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.

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