Mass. crew hits the fire ground in Oregon
More than two dozen members of the Massachusetts Task Force 1 urban search and rescue team are on the ground in Oregon, working through the wreckage wrought by deadly wildfires that have charred roughly one million acres.
Photos provided by the task force show some of the 25 team members wearing masks and walking through rubble under a thick, yellow-orange haze as they work to conduct structure assessments and search for missing people. Among the wreckage were felled trees and a burned-out car.
“Massachusetts Task Force Members are working with the people of Oregon in their long and short term recovery efforts,” spokesman Thomas Gatzunis said. “Their activities will help the communities recover more quickly from these devastating fires.”
Task force members flew out to
Portland, Ore., on Tuesday and got to work Wednesday in the wildfire-ravaged canyons.
Twelve people remained missing as of Wednesday and eight people had died as a result of the fires that have destroyed more than 1,600 homes and displaced thousands, Oregon authorities said.
There were 28 active fires in Oregon alone Thursday as blazes continued to rage across the western United States. More than 17,400 firefighters were battling nearly 30 infernos in California, which has seen more than 3.4 million acres torched by flames so far this year, state agencies said. More than 30 people have died across California, Oregon and Washington in the latest batch of fires, authorities said.
Haze from the blazes continues to sit over New England, transported through the upper atmosphere by the jet stream across the U.S. and into Europe.