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Fire season ends with a splash Though dry, '99 had fewer big blazes By PAUL FATTIG The last fire season of the millennium was snuffed out by rain Wednesday. The 1999 fire season, although explosively dry amid weeks of extreme fire conditions, scorched only 300 acres in Jackson and Josephine counties, well below the yearly average of 4,646 acres. "You always have to knock on wood, but we had good cooperation from the public (and area fire departments)," said Jeff Schwanke, state Department of Forestry's Southwest Oregon District office in Central Point. "They did a good job," he said. "By late July, and all of August and September, we had become very concerned about the fire conditions." That concern was fueled by a 150-acre fire that burned the Green Springs area in May, before the fire season officially started on June 12, he said. Aside from a 45-acre fire in the Williams Valley in July, however, all of the fires throughout the district were relatively small, he said. All told, there were 274 fires in the district, including 74 which were caused by lightning. "We were darned lucky," Schwanke concluded. The department's firefighters battle wildfires on private, county, state and Bureau of Land Management property in the two-county district. The Siskiyou and Rogue River national forests were also spared from a devastating wildfire season. The exception was the 2,000-acre arson fire on Mount Emily in the Siskiyou forest near Brookings earlier this month. On state-protected land in the two counties, fire season normally starts early in June, although it didn't begin until July 1 in 1998, the latest since records began in 1967. During the 1998 fire season, there were only 159 fires burning 156 acres, the lowest number in 30 years, officials said. The number of fires started during the 1999 fire season was about 10 above the average. This year's fire season lasted 138 days. The average season is 143 days. Like Schwanke, Jim Wolf, fire prevention planner for the district, cited public awareness for keeping fires at a minimum during the fire season. But Wolf warns that the fire danger is never extinguished with the end of fire season. "We typically have escaped fires when the sun comes out," he said of debris burns. "People still need to be careful and attend to them." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA