Firefighters battle to save Oregon’s 325-foot Doerner Fir

Portland, Oregon. (AP) – The Oregon authorities are trying to turn off a fire burning in one of the largest trees in the world near the southern coast of the state.

The Doerner tree, a coastal fir tree of Douglas over 325 feet (99 meters) in height and estimated at over 450, has been burning since Saturday in Coos County in the coastal chain of Oregon. An infrared drone flight on Tuesday did not show any active flame or smoke at the top of the tree, but it detected heat in a cavity in the 280-foot trunk high, the spokesperson for the Federal of Land Management Bureau of Land Management, Megan Harper.

To discover how to approach the tree aside to turn off the cavity with water was a challenge, said Harper. Various options have been discussed, in particular the construction of scaffolding or the climbing of adjacent trees for better positioning, or letting it smoke and surveillance to see if it revives.

The crews remained on site on Tuesday and a helicopter was pending in the event of necessary waterfalls, she added.

The COOS Forest Protective Association said on Monday that helicopter bucket drops had reduced fire activity near the top of the tree. He added that the nozzle was placed at the base of the tree, where containment lines were also built to prevent a new spread of fire.

The fire can have an impact on the position of the tree in the world height classification, said Harper.

“We lost about 50 feet, just because of the fire and the pieces,” she said, noting that the 50 feet (15 meters) were lost through the summit. “So I don’t know where it will happen after that, but it’s always a magnificent tree.”

Investigators from the Bureau of Land Management excluded lightning as a cause of the fire on the weather data, the Federal Agency announced on Tuesday evening. It is the only tree on fire in the immediate vicinity, and the cause of the fire is still being studied.

For the moment, the tree is not likely to burn completely, according to Harper.

“Right now, it’s not a danger,” she said. “The tree is so tall, it has so much mass that it would take a while for it to burn throughout the tree.”

Meanwhile, people involved in fire fighting efforts want to do everything to save the historic tree, said Harper.

“I think people really love it,” she said about the tree. “There is a lot of history there, and so we don’t want to lose it.”