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| Heightened Awareness Holds Down Wildfires in 2004 | ||
| 11/23/2004 | ||
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Oregon Dept. of Forestry provided the following news feed to Oregon radio stations today. OREGON NEWS NET Oregon Dept. of Forestry 04-50 Contact: Rod Nichols, (503) 945-7425 Audio feed available at 1-800-503-NEWS and on the Internet, http://www.odf.state.or.us/divisions/resource_policy/public_affairs/news_releases/newsnet/koga NEWS DIRECTORS NOTE: This audio feed includes a produced news story along with the separate actualities. Several additional actualities are also included. You can record the feed by calling the toll-free number above. The feed will play automatically. Or if you have capability to use digital audio, you can download the feed from the web site listed above. The produced story and the actualities are available as separate monaural MP3 files. The actualities used in the main story will be repeated at the end. Three additional actualities are included. Following the tone at the end, we invite you to leave your station call letters and any comments. Story in three, two, one . . . STORY
(Runtime: 60 seconds) (Mary Ellen Holly) "The number of human-caused wildfires averaged 640 this year, still way below the 10-year average of 762. And I think this tells us a lot about the job we´ve done in prevention awareness and education." Mary Ellen Holly is president of the Keep Oregon Green Association. Fires started by equipment ranked highest. (Mary Ellen Holly) "Forty-nine of those equipment fires were caused by motorists. Now this could mean that a car´s catalytic converter caused a fire, or maybe the car caught fire on the side of the road and caused a wildfire to run up the hill." Among human-caused fires, escaped debris burns ran a close second to equipment fires. (Mary Ellen Holly) "The debris-burning fires were mostly on small parcels of land and were caused by carelessness of the landowner. These landowners failed to monitor their fires, and thus the wind comes up and spreads the fire beyond the pile or the field that was being burned." Holly credited Oregonians for holding down the overall number of wildfires despite hot, dry conditions. In Salem, I´m Rod Nichols. ###
ACTUALITIES
(Mary Ellen Holly) "Forty-nine of those equipment fires were caused by motorists. Now this could mean that a car´s catalytic converter caused a fire, or maybe the car caught fire on the side of the road and caused a wildfire to run up the hill." (10 sec) (Mary Ellen Holly) "The debris-burning fires were mostly on small parcels of land and were caused by carelessness of the landowner. These landowners failed to monitor their fires, and thus the wind comes up and spreads the fire beyond the pile or the field that was being burned." (12 sec) ADDITIONAL ACTUALITIES
(Mary Ellen Holly) "We´ve done a great job of reducing the numbers of fire already. But we just have to keep working with the public through awareness and education, and make sure that they understand that they are responsible for wildfire prevention." (11 sec) (Mary Ellen Holly) "We have proven over and over again that by making the public more aware of the fire problem, that they have been more aware of their actions when visiting the forests. And, also, telling the public the right behaviors that prevent wildfires from occurring has made them more personally responsible for fire prevention." (15 sec) |
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