A bulldozer carves a fire line near Suzan and Keith Jones' home along Clarks Creek, in southern Baker County, on July 19, 2024.

The Durkee Fire, propelled Sunday evening, July 21, by gusty winds reaching 50 mph from nearby thunderstorms, stayed west of Interstate 84 and Huntington overnight, and fire crews, including more than a dozen aircraft, will be focusing on that side of the blaze today.

With the fire growing toward the east and southeast, the Baker County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday evening issued a Level 3 — leave now — evacuation notice for Huntington, which was threatened by a different fire earlier this month. The evacuation notice remains in effect, as thunderstorms with possible gusty winds are forecast for Monday afternoon.

Huntington City Recorder Siobhan Boxberger was at city hall on Monday morning.

She didn’t have an estimate for how many of Huntington’s 510 or so residents evacuated, but she said some rode the bus to a Red Cross shelter in Ontario, while others left in their own vehicles.

Boxberger said she recommends residents who have left to delay their return until the sheriff’s office reduces the evacuation level and the air quality improves, particularly those with respiratory or other physical challenges. She said the smoke wasn’t as thick as on Sunday, but was still dense.

Boxberger thanked all the firefighters, calling them “rock stars.”

ODOT closed Interstate 84 between Baker City and Ontario Sunday evening. The freeway reopened Monday morning.

The fire has burned about 174,000 acres, based on an aerial infrared survey about 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Resources assigned to the fire total 565 people, including 43 engines, 14 crews, four water tenders, 10 bulldozers and two helicopters. Retardant tankers are also available.

As many as 25 aircraft have worked on the fire, one of the biggest aerial firefighting armadas in the country, according the fire management team. As of Sunday, air tankers had dropped at least 400,000 gallons of retardant, and helicopters had doused flames with at least 185,000 gallons of water.

Jessica Reed, public information officer for the Durkee Fire management team, said Monday morning that no homes have been burned according to reports from fire crews.

Ashley McClay, public information officer for the Baker County Sheriff’s Office, also said she had no reports of structures burned. 

The fire, started by lightning on July 17, also spread to the west and northwest, north of the Burnt River, on Sunday, Reed said. It is the biggest blaze this year in Oregon, and possibly the biggest in Baker County history. The Cornet-Windy Ridge Fire burned 104,000 acres, all inside the county, in August 2015. The Durkee Fire started in Baker County but has also burned thousands of acres in Malheur County.

Fire crews in the Deer Creek area, north of the Burnt River about 10 miles west of Durkee, used burnouts on Sunday, she said — lighting fires to burn vegetation between the main fire and control lines to widen the area devoid of combustible material.

Reed said the Durkee Fire has also reached areas burned in the 2015 Cornet-Windy Ridge Fire. Those areas, which have less vegetation, including highly combustible juniper trees, give firefighters anchor points for control lines, she said.

Reed said crews are also employing burnouts on the east and southeast parts of the fire, from Rye Valley south, where the fire was most active Sunday evening, as well as from Bridgeport south to Malheur Reservoir

At the far southern tip of the fire, in Malheur County, the fire is relatively narrow, and there was little activity there, or heat detected in the infrared survey, on Sunday, Reed said.

On the fire’s west flank, along Clarks Creek, Suzan and Keith Jones have returned to their home after evacuating Saturday evening, July 20, when a wind shift pushed flames toward their ranch.

Suzan Jones said on Monday morning that the fire was “right behind” their home. The fire destroyed fences but didn’t damage their home, including their solar panels, she said.

A structure protection crew was stationed at the home.

Jones said firefighters even filled the Jones’ canoe with water.

ONTARIO — The Red Cross of Idaho and East Oregon and its partners have opened an evacuation shelter in Ontario for those displaced by the Durkee Fire.

The Red Cross shelter is at the Malheur County Fairgrounds, 795 NW Ninth St., and will provide a safe place to stay, meals, information, emotional support and access to other community resources. There is room for livestock and RVs.