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SUNNY Temp: 61 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Sunday, June 8, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend May 20, 2003 Ronnie Chittim walks near one of her cabins on a remote site near the Illinois River west of Selma. Chittim fled her property last summer when the Biscuit fire looked likely to reach the cabins. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Avoiding the fire next time A Selma-area resident whose home was threatened by 1987’s Silver fire and last year’s Biscuit fire is already making plans this year to protect her property By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune SELMA — The way Ronnie Chittim sees it, June is the month to watch. "You can have a wet winter and spring, but that won’t make much difference if June is dry," she observed. "If we have a dry June, then we could have a bad fire season." Chittim knows about bad fire seasons. Last July she fled her picturesque cabin overlooking the scenic Illinois River a dozen miles west of Selma just ahead of the Biscuit fire, which burned 499,465 acres to become the nation’s largest fire of the year. Advertisement The lion’s share of the fire, the largest in Oregon in nearly 150 years, roared throughout the Siskiyou National Forest, encircling her 20-acre island of private land. Its hot breath nearly ignited her home. An old cherry tree 20 feet from the main cabin was killed by the fire. And the forest just uphill from the cabin is now a stand of charred silhouettes. But all three cabins on her parcel, two of which she rents out to folks seeking scenic solitude on the river, survived without a scratch. "I have a lot of awe for fires," she said. "When you think about how it creates its own weather and wind, you know you don’t have any control. "It was a miracle that anything survived," she added. True story, said Judy McHugh, a Siskiyou forest employee who worked with the half dozen residents in the area during the fire. "That fire came quite close," McHugh said. "Firefighters on the ground felt the use of backburning there protected her structure." Backburning is a firefighting technique in which material ahead of the main blaze is torched, causing the smaller fire to burn back into the main fire. "None of us would really want to hypothesize what would have happened without backburning, but that fire was getting real close to Ronnie," she added. Too close for comfort, Chittim said. She plans to have the meadow between her home and the river mowed soon to create a safety zone. The Oregon Department of Forestry, which protects private property threatened by wildfires, is urging rural residents to prepare for the coming season by removing brush and vegetation near their homes now. Chittim is concerned that small trees and brush killed by last year’s fire coupled with lush vegetation popping up this spring could cause a problem again this year. "It doesn’t take long for all of that to dry out," she said. "If June comes and it dries out, we got a problem." But a fire isn’t going to scare her off. She loves the land she has owned since 1980. The parcel is part of an old homestead that produced fruit and vegetables for the river’s legendary mining community a century ago. Before the miners arrived, many of the benches along the river were seasonally occupied by Indian people. Access to the area near Six Mile Creek is via a narrow mountain road. Chittim was at the site last year when a lightning strike on July 12 sparked the fire downstream in the Siskiyou forest. It wasn’t the first time a fire threatened the narrow river canyon. The 1987 Silver fire, which burned some 100,000 acres, rained ashes down on her home. Like the Biscuit fire, the Silver fire was sparked by dry lightning in the roadless area on the northern edge of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. And, like the Silver, the Biscuit fire leapt the Illinois River. Unlike the Silver, it continued burning toward Chittim’s home. Nearly a week after it started, the fire approached her place. Two friends arrived to start cutting fuel by removing lower limbs from trees on the west side of the house. "We also took some brush out along the creek near the house," she said. "I was busy clipping underneath away from the deck and around some plants. We did this work 12 hours a day for two days." They placed sprinklers on the roof and turned on the gravity-fed sprinkling system. "Those sprinklers soaked everything for a couple of days before the fire got here," she said, later adding, "Of course, they quit going when my (plastic) pipes burned up. "We kept hearing that the fire was getting bigger and coming closer," she added. "But I never thought it would leap the hills or the river." It did, burning the historic McCaleb Ranch just downriver. "About an hour after I heard the McCaleb Ranch had burned, the Forest Service people called me (on her cell phone) and said I had 45 minutes to evacuate," Chittim said. She grabbed some photographs, legal papers and her dogs — Jake and Cody — and left. "I was told that they had started a backfire at the fence line to try to stop the fire," she said. "But they left right after they started it because they didn’t want to be trapped by the fire. "We didn’t know for three days whether the cabins survived," she added. "That was pretty gut-wrenching, not knowing." She would return some three weeks later. "This is still the most beautiful, unspoiled area you could find," she said. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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