The Doerner Fir, a coastal Douglas Fir tree over 325 feet (99 meters) tall and estimated to be over 450 years old, has been burning since Saturday in Coos County in Oregon's Coast Range. An infrared drone flight on Tuesday showed no active flames or smoke at the top of the tree, but it detected heat within a cavity in the tree trunk some 280 feet high, federal Bureau of Land Management spokesperson Megan Harper said.
Figuring out how to approach the tree from the side to douse the cavity with water has been a challenge, Harper said. Various options have been discussed, including building scaffolding or climbing adjacent trees for better positioning, or letting it smolder and monitoring to see if it reignites.
Crews remained on-site Tuesday and a helicopter was on standby in case of needed water drops, she added.
The Coos Forest Protective Association said Monday that helicopter bucket drops had reduced fire activity near the top of the tree. It added that sprinklers were placed at the base of the tree, where containment lines were also constructed to prevent further fire spread.
The fire may impact the tree's standing in global height rankings, Harper said.
“We’ve lost about 50 feet of it, just from fire and pieces falling out," she said, noting that the 50 feet (15 meters) were lost through the top burning. “So I don’t know where it’ll stand after this, but it’s still a magnificent tree.”
Investigators with the Bureau of Land Management have ruled out lightning as a cause of the fire based on weather data, the federal agency said Tuesday evening. It is the only tree on fire in the immediate vicinity, and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
For now, the tree is not at risk of fully burning down, according to Harper.
“Right now, that is not a danger,” she said. “The tree is so big, it’s got so much mass that it would take a while for it to burn all the way through the tree."
Meanwhile, those involved in the firefighting efforts want to do everything possible to save the historic tree, Harper said.
“I think people really love it,” she said of the tree. “There's a lot of history there, and so we don't want to lose it."
