Senator Wyden and Rep. Hoyle examine University of Oregon's new 'Wildfire Alert' smoke cameras

EUGENE, Ore. — Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Val Hoyle stopped by the University of Oregon's Alan Price Science Commons and Research Library on Monday to see its new 'Wildfire Alert' smoke cameras.

The fire cameras and associated tools are meant to help firefighters and first responders locate, scale and monitor wildfires. Over the past four years, they've provided critical information for more than 1,000 wildfires.

In April of this year, Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced that the University of Oregon received $800,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to launch its Center for Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice.

Wyden says these cameras are imperative to stopping wildfires. Both representatives took a look at the fires currently burning in our community through these cameras to see how useful they are for wildland firefighters.

"These fires we're faced with now are not your grandfather's fires," the Senator said. "They're bigger, they're hotter, they're more powerful, they're leaping over rivers. And were not gonna beat these fires with grandfather technologies."

Despite all of the progress, he says there's still so much more to do. Sen. Wyden says we need to constantly be looking at ways to modernize our wildfire protection efforts and open more cooling centers.

Rep. Val Hoyle said she was woken up Sunday night by the Level 3 evacuation notice in the McKenzie River Bridge area for the Lookout Fire, and says she was grateful for the alert. She advises all denizens in Lane County to set aside similar emergency precautions.

Hoyle said addressing wildfires is a bipartisan issue that has brought both sides of the aisle together, since fires affect blue and red states equally.

She's currently working with Republic Rep. Cliff Bentz to push for more wildfire funding.

"If we can address these things upfront, we save taxpayer dollars instead of writing a blank check afterwards," Hoyle states. "So we're going to look at flexibility of federal contracts so that we can address the fires to fight them here the way we know how, and making sure that we're hiring local good quality wildland contractors cooperate locally with our professional firefighters, volunteer firefighters."