The warming climate means snow on Oregon's famous peaks melts earlier, leaving soil and vegetation parched by late summer even if it does rain, said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. Marc Brooks, who founded Cascade Relief Team to help last fall's fire victims statewide, said by this April his group had been put on alert four times for wildfires at a time when "we should be getting snow, not drought." Several fires started this week, triggering evacuations and road closures as temperatures soared. The state weathered its driest April in 80 years, and in the normally wet months of March and April, it had the lightest rainfall since 1924. West enters yet another year of drought, Oregon is now starting fire season amid some of the worst conditions in memory. It was a wake-up call for the Pacific Northwest as climate change brings destructive blazes that feel more like California's annual fire siege to wet places and urban landscapes once believed insulated from them. Pushed by unusually strong winds, fires ripped through temperate rainforest just a few minutes’ drive from the ocean, crept to within 30 miles of downtown Portland, leveled thousands of homes and businesses along Interstate 5 and wiped out communities that cater to outdoors enthusiasts. The small Oregon coast town is still recovering from the devastating fire that destroyed 293 homes. The remains of a home that burned down during the Echo Mountain fire are seen in Otis, Ore., on Thursday, May.
Almost all the damage occurred over a hellish 72 hours that stretched firefighters to their breaking point. The fire that leveled the rural community of 3,500 people was part of an Oregon wildfire season last fall that destroyed more than 4,000 homes, killed nine people and raged through 1.1 million acres. “It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever gone through." It rains three-quarters of the year," Melynda Small said. “Nobody ever thought that on the Oregon coast we would have a fire like this.
Only two houses on their street in Otis survived a fire they expected to be tamped out long before it reached their door less than 6 miles from the Pacific. When it was over, they were left homeless by a peril they had never imagined. The Smalls and their four children fled, leaving behind 26 pet chickens, two goldfish and a duck named Gerard as wind whipped the blaze into a fiery tornado and trees exploded around them.
But just after midnight, a neighbor awakened them as towering flames, pushed by gusting winds, bore down.
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