Page 72 - Southern Oregon Magazine Winter 2021

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FIREFIGHTERS
Information about COVID-19 changed as scientists and medical
experts learned more, putting a strain on many, including fire-
fighters. They couldn’t shut down fire stations, yet crews were
concerned about infection risk. OSHA granted special guidelines,
considering them essential and a “family unit” due to their proximity
at the firehouse and in the engine. They wear masks at their stations
and distance in the community as best they can. But as firefighter Travis
Marsh says, “I look forward to again being able to give a station tour
to a kindergarten class, to welcome an out-of-town visitor to my fire
station.”

9-1-1…THERE’S A FIRE…
September 8, 2020 started as another hot day in Southern Oregon.
Within hours, everything changed. It became a day that firefighters and
4,000-plus individuals will never forget.

That morning, Battalion Chief Lloyd Lawless, Task Force Leader Rogue
Valley 1 out of Grants Pass received notice of a fire with a red flag warn-
ing—an indicator of high temperatures and high winds. The region was
also tinder dry after nearly three months without measureable rain. As
Lieutenant Brandon Rigaud, Company Officer Engine 7308, and his
crew of two (Josh Ward and Ben Nelson) headed south, they felt the
force of the wind and observed smoke laying out horizontally, not in an
upward plume. This indicated a wind-driven fire, an ominous situation.
Responding units took whatever route they could, as evacuating traffic
left I-5 basically at a standstill, and Pacific Highway 99 was clogged. By
the time they arrived in Ashland, the fire had already passed them. One
of their first assignments was putting out embers and small firebrands,
which are what often ignite a building. Lawless noted that the green
areas they had seen when heading south had become gray decimation
when they chased the fire north.

Units from Medford, Ashland, the Bureau of Land Management,
Oregon Department of Forestry, Jackson and Josephine Counties joined
the fight. All area police and sheriffs’ departments played an invaluable
role in setting up traffic control. Talent requested more manpower, but
it simply wasn’t available. Portland was four-plus hours away, and the
statewide high winds had fueled raging fires southeast of Portland, east
of Salem, northeast of Eugene, and in Northern California. Large sec-
tions of other towns were also being reduced to ashes. Air resources,
fire engines, personnel, whether ODF or Cal Fire, were stretched to
their maximum limits.

When asked about emotions while desperately trying to squelch an
inferno, Lawless says, “You’re thinking of the safety of people and of
your own people, of where that fire is going. You fall back on your train-
ing. You’re given assignments and you do them. But with a wind-driven
fire and the distances it was traveling, it was overwhelming. You have to
believe in every agency and every person—whether from a volunteer
department or a professional paid department—that they’re bringing
their A game that day. You have to look at the situation as a whole, but
you have to own the ground you were given and do the best you can to
make the best decisions possible.”

70 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | winter 2021