Temporary Emergency Closure of Malheur National Forest
By Mindy Gould on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News Eastern/Southeast Oregon Top Stories
JOHN DAY, PRAIRIE CITY, and HINES (Released by U.S. Forest Service) — Due to active wildfires compounded by extremely unfavorable weather conditions, limited firefighting resources and County Resources, the Malheur Forest Management have a joint concern with the Counties for public safety. Forest officials are temporarily closing lands within the Malheur National Forest.
The objective of the closure is to proactively protect public and firefighter safety as the incident management team continues to engage on the Falls incident and local resources continue to respond to new smoke reports. Falls Fire is currently 132, 751 acres as of this morning with 16% containment. Fire resources continue to respond to multiple new starts resulting form thunderstorms that move through the area yesterday. Three new incidents that are a concern are the Telephone Fire on the Emigrant Creek Ranger District near King Mountain, the Whiskey Fire on the Blue Mountain Ranger District off forest road 3660 and the Flagtail Fire near Flagtail lookout on the Blue Mountain Ranger District. Compounded by multiple active large wildfires burning across the region, and multiple fires involving evacuations, firefighting resources and county resources are stretched thin. Forest officials have implemented the Malheur National Forest closure for public and firefighter safety.
This closure means that the public is prohibited from entering lands, roads, trails and recreation areas and facilities on the Malheur National Forest.
A detailed map and description of the closure area is available on the Forest website and at any Forest office. Closure signs will be posted on the ground.
The National Multi-Agency Coordination Group set the National Preparedness Level to 5 (PL 5) on July 18, 2024 due to significant fire activity occurring in multiple geographic areas, an increase in incident management team mobilization, and heavy shared resource commitment to large fires nationally. PL 5 is the highest level of wildland fire activity. Several geographic areas are experiencing large, complex wildland incidents, which have the potential to exhaust national wildland firefighting resources.
For additional information visit www.fs.usda.gov/malheur or call our office at 541-575-3000.
