October 11, 2012
Weather Change Eases Fire Concerns
Fire crews were kept busy Tuesday afternoon with a pair of fires only minutes apart. Operations Chief Marvin Tipler with Siuslaw Valley Fire and Rescue said the first one, on Grand Avenue a mile south of Florence turned out to be a homeless encampment that appeared to have been deliberately set. Damage was limited to the camp itself and did not spread to the nearby vegetation. Six minutes after that call arrived, though, another one came in for a brush fire on Oak Street near 38th Place.
Marvin Tipler – “Because we had already been dispatched to the other call crews were readily available so they zipped over there real quick-like and got a wet line around it.”
The second blaze covered less than a quarter-acre and crews were able to quickly contain it. The cause of the blaze was of concern.
Marvin Tipler – “They found a book of matches that had been lit and threw in there. They don’t know who threw the book of matches in there, but it definitely was human caused.”
Even though the fires were unrelated, there was a common theme that kept both from getting out of control.
Marvin Tipler – “I could tell, you know, on the fire we had out on Grand Avenue that we had had a change in weather pattern, that the relative humidity had gone up, otherwise we would have had a brush fire there, south of town.”
Tipler said the ‘in-town’ blaze also had the potential to get out of control quickly had weather conditions been different.
Planning Commission Shrinking
Florence city councilors approved a proposal Monday night to shrink the Planning Commission and allow them to meet less often. The move was given the ok by councilors who agreed to reduce the number of planning commissioners from seven to five. Under the previous rules, no more than two of the commissioners could be from outside city limits. That has now been changed to one, and that commissioner must live within the city’s Urban Growth Boundary. The requirement to meet at least once each month has also been eliminated. A lack of land-use and development applications prompted that change. Two recent vacancies on the panel have gone unfilled while officials pondered the change.
Sewage Spill on the Umpqua
Don’t eat the oysters in Winchester Bay right now, but health officials say the fish are ok. A break in a nearly 50-year old sewer line beneath the Umpqua River between Gardiner and Reedsport over the weekend caused an estimated 50-thousand gallons of raw sewage to flow into the waterway. The line, buried about ten feet beneath the river bed, carries waste from the community of Gardiner to the treatment plant in Reedsport. The Gardiner Sanitary District was able to reroute the sewage temporarily. Alex Manderson with the Oregon Agriculture Department called the spill “significant” but added that the volume of water flowing in the river diluted it. He asked oyster farmers downstream to delay harvesting for a few days, but said fish should not be affected.
Here comes the rain…
Forecasters say a significant change in the weather is expected to begin tomorrow and extend through the weekend when rain returns to Western Oregon. A series of fall frontal systems will move across the region with the first one bringing light amounts of rain Friday. The National Weather Service says a subtropical moisture connection will feed more precipitation through at least Monday. Temperatures are expected to remain seasonal and winds should be moderate. But, they add, rainfall amounts could reach between five and eight inches in the northern Coast Range.