Fire stalks Oregon community

AGNESS, Ore. - Just when they think the forest fire is quieting, and talk resumes about pulling salmon and steelhead trout from the Rogue River, the smoke roils over the ridgeline once again. Women confide their fears and men bristle with anger and defiance.

Like a low-grade fever that's irritating but not debilitating, this fire wears on daily life in southwestern Oregon.

It's been burning for three weeks through the crowded conifers, myrtles and oaks of the Siskiyou National Forest. And for just as long, it has been threatening the 150 residents of this river valley hamlet, accessible from the east by only a steep, serpentine one-lane road that clutches to the mountainside without guardrails, flanked by towering firs and patches of ferns, wild daisies and Queen Anne's lace.

By Saturday, the Florence blaze had burned through 190,000 acres of trees and untold plots of Oregon's vaunted marijuana crop, and continues to keep 17,000 residents south of here on evacuation alert. It is one of 11 big fires burning nearly a half-million acres in Oregon, shrouding big cities and small towns in acrid, stagnant smoke.

Given some measure of fortune, Agness is mostly upwind of this forest fire, and the sky is usually brilliant blue, so they call it the lurking monster. Stoked by afternoon heat and wind, the fire rears its head from behind the ridgelines, obliterating the afternoon sun with plumes of smoke that turn from white to muddy orange.

The fire dragon creeps to within four or five miles of here, retreats and returns. Its incessant threat is even wearing the patience of this particularly laid-back town.

'Like living in Florida'

"This is like living in Florida and getting a hurricane watch every day for two weeks," complained Leo Wright, a Las Vegas businessman who maintains a second home here so he can run his powerful jet boat up the river to relax. "Well, bring on the hurricane and get it over with." Postmistress Sandy Stallard has been tracking the fire's progress through word of mouth. "It was coming down Lawson Creek, and someone told me that Game Lake burned," she said. "I'm not sure if it's reached Nancy Creek or the Indigo. It missed the Briggs Ranch but it burned the old Connor homestead. And it's up on the entire ridge above Fishhook." She has bundled up family treasures, including an heirloom quilt, for quick escape.

Inside the eclectic Agness Store - where the sign on the wooden screen door perpetually promises "Free beer tomorrow" - owner Gayle Soule gamely greets tourists, who are only slightly fewer in number this summer. They buy Rogue River apple butter and blackberry jam, locally crafted shell jewelry and vintage children's pedal cars, which Soule's husband, Tom, has painstakingly restored. But Soule's mind is elsewhere.

"I've had a hard time sleeping," she said. "When I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I go out on the porch deck and look for the glow." She's packed her grandmother's ceramic rolling pin and the carnival glass fruit bowl with the cranberry edging.

The men who gather at the metal picnic table in front of the store don't betray such anxieties. "Floods and fires, not a damn thing you can do about 'em," said Butch Wood, sipping his afternoon Hamm's. A flood in '64 took out two local bridges that weren't replaced, and residents now have to drive eight miles farther to leave town. "If the fire blows this way, it does. But it won't. Here, have a beer, and don't worry about it."