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August 5, 2004

Cave Junction residents work furiously to hold back wind-driven flames on the outskirts of town Wednesday afternoon. The fire started near O’Brien and quickly consumed dozens of acres and closed Highway 199 for several hours.
Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli

Separate fires cause 2 deaths

Crews battle a200-acre wildland blaze near Cave Junction started by a downed power line

From staff and wire reports

Two Southern Oregon residents died Wednesday afternoon in separate fire-related incidents in White City and near Cave Junction, officials said.

A 71-year-old White City man died after apparently trying to extinguish a fire that damaged the inside of his home at 3080 Old Sams Valley Road, said Deputy Fire Marshal Don Hickman of Jackson County Fire District No. 3.

The victim was identified by a Jackson County sheriff’s report as Floyd Charlie Worden.

District 3 crews went to Worden’s house at about 5 p.m. and found him collapsed in front of the home in full cardiac arrest, Hickman said.

"It appears (Worden) had been fighting the fire from outside the house," Hickman said.

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Firefighters administered CPR to Worden before he was taken to Providence Medford Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of the house fire is under investigation.

Earlier in the afternoon, an elderly female hospice patient died after a wildfire was discovered near her Cave Junction home. Jerry Schaeffer, a division chief for the Illinois Valley Fire Protection District, said the woman apparently died from stress related to the fire while being driven by her caregiver to Grants Pass.

A downed power line leading to the home of the hospice patient was blamed for starting the wind-driven wildfire that threatened homes on the west side of Cave Junction before firefighters stopped it.

The fire burned roughly 200 acres of grass, brush and scattered timber in a pocket of homes near Illinois River State Park before it was contained by hand crews and by firefighters using air tankers, helicopters and bulldozers.

Highway 199, the main route from Grants Pass to the coast, was closed for about two hours while the fire burned.

Three outbuildings and a pickup burned, said Joe Feldhaus, another division chief for the Illinois Valley district.

Officials evacuated a trailer park and several other residences in the area while firefighters battled the blaze, Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel said.

"It came right up behind us — about as close as you’d ever want to be to something like that," said Ron Hoofman, a resident of Shady Acres Trailer and RV Park. "It was pretty scary."

The fire drew a massive response from the Oregon Department of Forestry, which sent two air tankers from its Medford base, plus four helicopters.

Two firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation and two for heat exhaustion.

The fire burned near the site of 2002’s Biscuit fire. That massive fire scorched 500,000 acres and threatened the 17,000 residents of the Illinois Valley, including the town of Cave Junction, after four lightning-sparked fires merged.

Elsewhere in the state, the Log Springs wildfire on the north side of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, and the Panorama fire in the Columbia Gorge were both fully contained.




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