As wildfire season begins early in the region, one Baker County forestland owner gave a group of about 90 people an account of how last August’s Cornet/Windy Ridge Fire has affected her property.

Eileen Gyllenberg, who with her husband, Brent, lives along Beaver Creek Road about 12 miles south of Baker City, is president of the Baker County chapter of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association (OSWA).

The group that traveled to the Gyllenberg Beaver Mountain Bison Ranch earlier this month included members of OSWA, which has about 1,500 member families across Oregon, as well as members of the Oregon Tree Farm System and other regional woodland owners.

Before Gyllenberg served a barbecue bison burger lunch, the group listened to Rick Wagner, a forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry in La Grande, talk about wildfire history in the area.

Wagner said that in his more than 40 years fighting fires, he has adopted a motto:

“If you ever quit learning, it’s time to quit,” he said. “There’s always something we can learn. Whenever we say ‘been there, done that,’ in my business — in the fire world — that becomes a dangerous place because about the time you say you’ve seen everything, you get you’re lunch eaten.”

Wagner talked about the 2015 fire season, one of the worst, in terms of acreage burned, in Baker County’s history.

That was due in large part to the Cornet/Windy Ridge fire, a pair of lightning-sparked blazes that burned together and spread over 104,000 acres, the largest in the county’s recorded history.

During that fire in mid- August, every index used to measure and evaluate fire conditions was at or above record highs, Wagner said.

“It burnt some things we didn’t even think would burn,” he said.

In spite of the devastation that resulted, Wagner managed to incorporate some humor into his talk.

He mentioned how hot and dry the weather was during the 2015 fires, and said he and other firefighters were still recovering from the effects.

He advised the audience that if they noticed anyone coughing they should try not to stare.

“It could get a little weird,” Wagner said.

Then he coughed gently, put his hand to his mouth and, as he coughed harder, plumes of dust shot from his clenched hand.

As the crowd erupted with laughter, Wagner exclaimed “That’s how hot and dry it was!”

In a more serious vein, Wagner went on to talk about the Forestry Department’s work in Eastern Oregon with firefighting, forest management and helping private forest owners.

Wagner said his district is probably one of the more aggressive in the state when it comes to going after grants to assist landowners in managing their forests.

“We have a long history of working with partners and putting money on the ground,” he said.

Wagner pointed to the south of the small plateau the group was gathered on toward Dooley Mountain and explained that much of the area that burned last year harbored trees planted after the 20,000-acre Dooley Mountain fire in July 1989.

“We are standing in part of what was the Dooley Mountain fire,” he said. “If you look on the hillside, you can see some of the remnants of the plantations that were planted.”

The hillsides were a mosaic of blackened, browned and green stands of young trees, mainly ponderosa pines.

Wagner described the tough decisions he had to make when he was battling the Cornet/Windy Ridge fire.

He was managing a rapid deployment Type 3 Team.

“We were just trying to get a handle on this thing before the Type 1, Type 2 teams came in,” Wagner said. “It blew up and got so hot at 10:30, we had to shelter up in some big safety zones over by the freeway. We had some landowners try to race back up into that fire to get to their cabins. One of the toughest things I’ve had to do is to tell the different folks — the division (supervisors) that were in those safety zones — I said ‘Don’t chase them. We’re not going to kill two people today. I’ve been on a couple of those deals and it’s not pretty.”

Following Wagner’s presentation, Jim James, OSWA executive director, introduced Eileen Gyllenberg.

She pointed to the scorched trees on her property.

“This all burned on a Friday,” she said. “By Thursday night, I had taken all the pets and the kids out and my husband was staying.”

The emotion in Gyllenberg’s voice was evident as she described returning home after getting the kids and pets evacuated. She could see that the two fires, which had yet to burn together, were both bearing down on her property.

By Friday, the Gyllenbergs had dug skid trails around their property to try to stop the flames.

“We decided to make them double width,” Gyllenberg said.

Having a hard time speaking, she recalled when the fire burned their large metal shed.

“When the fire hit the shed, it just curled up in a ball,” she said. “It totally burned it up.”

By leaving sprinklers on around their house, the couple managed to save the structure, even though it’s not far from the shed that was destroyed.

Gyllenberg pointed to sections of siding on the house that warped from the heat.

She said her husband described the fire as “exploding down the draws.”

“You could hear it coming for three or four hours before it got here,” she said.

Gyllenberg paused several times as she recalled her memories from 10 months ago.

She quickly regained her composure and asked if anyone had questions.

An audience member asked how many acres she and her husband owned and how much of it burned. Gyllenberg said about 200 hundred acres of timber burned on their 1,000-acre ranch, along with some sagebrush.

She said the fire’s effects were not completely negative.

The flames burned some trees infested with mistletoe, a parasitic plant that can kill trees.

See more in the June 17, 2016, issue of the Baker City Herald.