PORTLAND — A 40-mile stretch of the lower Deschutes River was closed to rafters Tuesday as authorities battling a wildfire worried about the safety of river runners pulling in at night to camp.
A fire that began Saturday on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation has burned from the west to the river’s edge, said Lisa Clark of the Central Oregon fire dispatch center.
Neither side of the popular whitewater river was considered safe.
“We have a pretty good history of fires jumping the river,” Clark said.
The closure immediately affected about 100 rafters with permits to put in Tuesday on the Warm Springs-Nena stretch of the river, Clark said.
They were allowed to run downstream stretches instead. The Warm Springs-Nena stretch is the first segment runners can take on the lower Deschutes. Upriver, the Deschutes is dammed.
The fire has burned on about 35 square miles of grass, sagebrush and juniper on the lightly populated reservation east of the Cascade Range.
Firefighters said the spread of the fire slowed on Monday. So far, only one abandoned structure has been reported burned, and nobody has been seriously injured. The fire has been blamed on an unspecified human cause.
At another fire, to the south, a bulldozer dug a line around a wildfire threatening homes near the northern Klamath County town of Gilchrist, and residents were allowed to return.
The fire broke out Monday afternoon. About 120 homes were evacuated. Firefighters reported progress on the fire of about 350 acres, so residents were allowed to go home Monday night.
Firefighters said their task now is to improve the line around the fire and make sure flames don’t jump outside it.
That fire, too, is blamed on a human cause, but firefighters haven’t said exactly what it was.
The exact cause of both fires remains under investigation.
