ELK, Wash. — The devastation of the Oregon Road Fire was shocking to see when KREM 2 took a look behind the fire line with fire crews. With varying terrain and many homes needing protection among the 11,000-acre blaze, the fire has proven a challenge.
"Kind of utilizing, scouting out roads and maximizing our speed and what resources we have as far as plugging in," PNW Tean 3's Kevin Cahill said. "Here we can throw a dozer in, here we need a hand crew again."
Hand crews are working the northern perimeter of the fire, digging out and spraying down any potential hot spots.
"We're taking away all the potential for fires to flare back up," Operation Section Chief Nathan Goodrich said.
"We have a pretty good dent on the perimeter, but a significant amount of the interior we just haven't been able to even kind of get into yet," Cahill said.
The goal is to keep the fire from spreading out, especially with winds and higher temperatures over the next few days. Wind played a huge role in the fire's original spread last Friday with gusts in Elk recorded around 45 miles an hour.
"It was, it was moving," Goodrich said. "A wall of fire. You know this would've been a pretty horrendous sight."
With evacuations loosened to Level 2 Thursday, residents near the fire's starting point are returning to another horrendous site. Some are now living in tents near burned out homes while others are grateful to have something to come back to at all.
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