Vandals blamed for fire along BPA lines.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Vandals who shot out some power line insulators about 15 miles east of Lookout Point Dam may have indirectly caused a 25-acre fire in the Willamette National Forest on Tuesday.

A Bonneville Power Administration representative said Thursday the federal power-marketing agency is offering up to $25,000 for tips leading to the arrest of those who damaged the insulators.

The fire started about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when line crews finished replacing a set of poles and re-energized the Lookout Point and Hills Creek lines, BPA spokeswoman Kirsten Kler said.

The broken insulators caused the line to "flash" and sparks fell to the ground, igniting dry vegetation, Kler said.

U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Patti Rodgers said Thursday night she was unaware that the BPA had revealed the cause of the fire, which the Forest Service reported was off Highway 58 across from the Shady Dell campground, northwest of Westfir.

"If they (BPA) are acknowledging that as a cause and are providing that information to the investigation, that's great," Rodgers said. "It sounds like the same fire."

She said there was only one fire in the vicinity that started around that time Tuesday afternoon.

The Forest Service had said previously it hadn't pinned down the cause of the fire, although Rodgers said Thursday night "it was obviously not lightning-caused."

The BPA said the damaged insulators also caused a two-hour power outage in Oakridge. Kler said line crews worked into the night Tuesday before restoring power.

Lane Electric Cooperative, which provides electric service in the Oakridge-Westfir area, said Tuesday night it understood power lines in the area had been shut down to protect firefighters.

"People who shoot at insulators should know how dangerous it is," Kler said. "In this case, a town lost electricity and a fire started that could have been much worse."

Anyone with information about the vandalism is asked to contact the Oregon State Police or the Lane County sheriff's office. The toll-free number to call is [phone].

Meanwhile, Rodgers said crews contained the fire - named the Buckhead fire - around 6 p.m. Thursday. Full control of the blaze is expected today, she said.

Most of the firefighters who fought the blaze were reassigned Thursday to fires burning in other parts of the state, she said. One 20-person fire crew and two or three engines remained on the scene, she said.

A new fire on the western edge of the Mount Washington Wilderness was reported about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Rodgers said. A 13-person crew was sent to assess the fire's size and risk, she said.

The Willamette forest's largest fire, near Lucky Butte in the Detroit Ranger District, was expected to be contained sometime today, she said.

Elsewhere, a 4 1/2 -acre fire in the Coburg Hills north of Springfield was contained shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday, said Paul Bell, district forester for the state Department of Forestry.

The fire began about 6 p.m. Wednesday and burned through a 10-year-old reforested area operated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A portion of private land owned by Weyerhaeuser Co. also burned, said Bell, who did not have a damage estimate.

The fire's cause is still under investigation. It started in an overlook area that attracts a lot of traffic and was probably human-caused, Bell said. "We don't know if it was cigarettes or fireworks, but we suspect it was something like that."

Bell said the local fire danger remains very high, and he asked that people be extremely careful, especially in light of a current shortage of firefighters due to the large number of fires currently burning throughout the state.