Small wildfire near Pringle Butte controlled

Published 6:47 am Thursday, July 10, 2014

Firefighters this evening had a small wildfire south of Bend under control.

The fire near Pringle Butte and about 9 miles southwest of Sunriver was human-caused, with the exact cause under investigation, said Jada Altman, the floor supervisor at the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center in Prineville. The fire burned six-tenths of an acre.

Firefighters also were working on an 8-acre blaze 2 to 3 miles southeast of Culver, said Maria Maragni, manager at the dispatch center. That fire had “plenty of resources” fighting it, Maragni said.

And a crew was responding by air to look at a fire spotted near Soda Table, 10 miles east of Paulina.

Fire crews were busy late Tuesday and earlier today with three other small wildfires sparked by Tuesday’s thunderstorm, said Kassidy Kern, spokeswoman for the dispatch center. Firefighters kept two of the fires, which burned about 10 miles southeast of La Pine, to about a tenth of an acre each and the other fire, just north of Paulina Lake, to less than an acre.

A spotter plane took off around 3 p.m. to search for more fires potentially started by the storm, which was most intense from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday and created 758 lightning strikes.

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