Oregon wildfire closed I-84 on Sunday. More closures could happen this week as it grows

A fast-growing fire in eastern Oregon closed a section of Interstate 84 for hours Sunday night into Monday morning, and fire officials told the Idaho Statesman there’s a chance that further closures could occur in the coming days.

The Oregon Department of Transportation closed a 74-mile stretch of highway between Ontario and Baker City on Sunday night as heavy smoke from the Durkee Fire reduced visibility.

The Durkee Fire started five miles southeast of Durkee, just off I-84, about 51 miles northwest of Ontario. The fire started on July 17 from a lightning strike and had grown to over 173,000 acres by early Monday afternoon.

“Due to the extreme fire growth toward I-84 and Huntington, we recommended to ODOT to close the freeway,” Ryan Sullivan, operations section chief on the Durkee Fire, said in a Facebook video on Monday morning .

I-84 was reopened Monday morning following the video’s publishing.

The wildfire is also just northeast of the Cow Valley Fire , which has burned 133,490 acres since July 11 but is now 78% contained. The incident management team overseeing the fire stated in a news release that the fire shows no signs of spreading.

The Durkee Fire has yet to threaten the freeway, but 0% of it is contained, and according to the Bureau of Land Management Vale District and the incident management team, it likely won’t be fully contained until Aug. 8.

The incident management team in charge of the fire works with the Oregon Department of Transportation to issue road closures for potential dangers.

“There could be closures in the future. It’s a pretty dynamic situation,” Alexa Valladolid, spokesperson for the Durkee Fire incident management team, told the Statesman on Monday. “Based on the weather we’re expecting today and tomorrow, we could see what we saw (Sunday).”

The National Weather Service in Boise measured wind gusts up to 49 mph in eastern Oregon on Sunday night. Valladolid said the fire had not threatened I-84, but with 0% contained, it has the “potential” to burn closer to the highway.

High winds were also expected Monday, with Weather Service meteorologist Sophia Adams telling the Statesman that wind gusts could reach 55 mph in parts of Idaho and Oregon. Adams said that wind in the Treasure Valley could reach between 30 and 40 mph.

Sullivan noted in the Monday morning Facebook video that the east side of the fire — closest to the highway — was the most active Sunday. However, crews worked overnight to anchor the fire on its east side into position, using preexisting fire scar tissues.

With the potential for further closures as storms form over eastern Oregon on Monday afternoon, Valladolid said the best place to keep an eye out for road closures is Tripcheck.com .

“We do talk to ODOT, it’s kind of an abundance of caution, and so we won’t close it unless we feel like we need to,” Valladolid said. “But we’ll do it sooner rather than later because we know there’s going to be a lot of traffic on the road.”