Gusty, shifting winds and high temperatures have caused a wildfire in central Oregon to spread rapidly, reaching more than 40,000 acres and prompting evacuations from ranches and communities in two counties, the authorities said on Tuesday.
The Cram fire, first reported on Sunday, grew by nearly 10 times its size in the past day, burning in grass, brush and juniper along U.S. Route 97, a north-south highway, near the sparsely populated area of Willowdale in Jefferson County.
Firefighters were expected to work overnight into Wednesday to protect structures and prevent the blaze from spreading farther, the Oregon State Fire Marshal agency said in a social media post Tuesday night. The blaze was 0 percent contained.
The fast-moving flames had covered 4,500 acres on Monday afternoon, prompting evacuations in Jefferson County and in adjacent Wasco County, the agency said. The state fire marshal, Mariana Ruiz-Temple, called the weather conditions “extremely challenging” in a statement.
“The wind was all day 25 miles per hour, and the terrain is a lot of hills, ridges and valleys, which makes it worse,” Gert Zoutendijk, a spokesman for the fire marshal, said in an interview, talking about the conditions on Monday. “The wind shifted, and basically it took the fire and ran.”
On Monday, firefighters and other crews, including workers from the Bureau of Land Management and Oregon Department of Forestry, installed containment lines and used air support from tankers and helicopters to cool hot spots, said Central Oregon Fire Info, an interagency dispatch service.
Despite those efforts, shifting winds propelled the fire over bulldozer lines that had been cut into the ground to prevent the spread of flames, Mr. Zoutendijk said. The fire reached the vicinity of the small community of Ashwood, which consists of about 30 homes, he said.
By Tuesday night, the fire had grown to about 41,400 acres, according to a map by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
Much of the mandatory evacuation zone was on ranch land and in sparsely populated areas.
In Jefferson County, a temporary shelter was set up at a middle school, and ranch animals were sent to local fairgrounds or to volunteers with land outside the evacuation zone. Residents were warned that shifting winds could prompt sudden changes in evacuation routes.
A small portion of Wasco County was affected by the Cram fire until it moved southeast, Mr. Zoutendijk said. The county previously evacuated residents in June, when the Rowena fire spread rapidly on the Oregon’s northern border.
The onset of the Cram fire marks the sixth time this summer that a fire threat has exceeded the capacity of local firefighters to manage it, forcing the state to activate its Emergency Conflagration Act, according to Ms. Ruiz-Temple, the fire marshal. Once it is activated, teams throughout the state can be called to help.
Gov. Tina Kotek also invoked the act on Saturday so firefighting teams could tackle the Highland fire, which burned through 719 acres in Crook County, also in central Oregon.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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