Climate change heats up fire risk in forests

Before Labor Day, Detroit was a quaint community on the shores of its namesake reservoir in the Santiam Canyon.

A day later the town was a smoldering ruin, with piles of twisted metal and rubble where residents once lived and worked. A burned-out firetruck stood in the town’s center, a symbolic and tragic symbol of the devastation. The same scene unfolded in Blue River, Vida, Phoenix, Talent and other small towns around the state.