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In air, on ground, crews battle 17 lightning fires By PAUL FATTIG Mike Melton spent most of Tuesday chasing after wisps. But the veteran firefighter for the Oregon Department of Forestry wasn't off on a lark. He was riding shotgun in a helicopter, scanning the forests below for the telltale wisps of smoke following the sizzling lightning and thunderstorm that dazzled eastern Jackson County with more than 500 downstrikes Monday night. Down on the ground, firefighters were busy battling 17 lightning-caused fires Tuesday in remote areas of Jackson County. Josephine County escaped the wrath of the blistering storm. Melton and fellow aerial spotter Chuck Miller, in an airplane, spotted several fires Tuesday, as did fire lookouts stationed on mountain peaks throughout the region. "You have to learn to tell the difference between a water dog and a smoke," explained Melton, a firefighter for nearly 25 years. "Right after a thunderstorm, you see these water dogs, little wispy clouds that are white in color. Smokes are more bluish. "You get sleepers out of a storm like this," he said. "They can lie there and smolder until we get a little wind and hot weather. Then they'll poke their heads up." And turn into raging forest fires if they aren't caught early, he added. "With that many strikes, we're expecting more fires," added Dennis Turco, fire prevention specialist with the department's Central Point office. Nine fires were burning on land protected by the Oregon Department of Forestry, including private, county, state and Bureau of Land Management wildlands. In addition, eight fires were reported on the Rogue River National Forest, all in the Butte Falls and Prospect areas. All the fires were small, less than an acre. They are mainly between Ashland and Prospect. Seven of the fires were so remote that state fire crews that began hiking into the sites at 8 a.m. had not reached them by noon, Turco said. "The storm made a north-south run along the western edge of the Cascades," he said, noting that extended from the state line north of Prospect. Four of fires in the Rogue River forest were in "mop up" status by Tuesday afternoon, according to Phil Cardin, dispatcher at the Forest Service's Medford Fire Center. Firefighters were also attacking the other four fires, he said. "It's looking pretty good now," he said late Tuesday evening. But the firefighters are concerned that temperatures are expected to rise to the triple digits by Thursday. Although the fire danger is currently rated as high, it could jump to extreme by week's end, Turco said. "We're expecting easterly winds (beginning tonight) with it heating up over an extended period," he said. The National Weather Service says the mercury may climb as high as 102 degrees in the Medford area on Thursday, followed by a high near 100 on Friday. There is also a chance of thunderstorms Friday night in the Cascade range, according to the forecast. Firefighters know that the Silver Fire of 1987 was ignited by a thunderstorm at the end of August, burning more than 100,000 acres in Southern Oregon. "We're cautiously optimistic," Turco said. "But we're looking at some hot, dry weather for the next few days." Meanwhile, fire officials are keeping firefighters and equipment ready for the heat wave. "We'll take them as they come," Turco said. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA