Fire officials caution about travel to Oregon coast

Fire officials caution about travel to Oregon coast

Nine news.

Fire officials are making steady progress on the sweet creek milepost 2 fire.

As kezi 9 news reporter jacob roberts shows us -- fire officials are asking people - especially coastal visitors - to give them space.

Thursday marked day five of firefighting efforts on the sweet creek milepost two fire.

The mapleton middle and high school has been turned into an incident command center.

Further down the road along highway 126, a base camp for firefighters.

In between, lots of traffic to and from camps as firefighters work to get the blaze under control.

And now, crews are warning about the holiday weekend and asking visitors to the coast to be careful as they make their way along 126.

Marcus kauffman says, "coming or going to the coast, or going to the beach, we don't discourage that.

We just encourage people to slow down, expect that there's going to be a little bit more time in travel" jacob roberts says, "the florence area chamber of commerce is expecting a big influx of visitors to the coast this weekend, but in order to get to florence from eugene, drivers will be headed through an active firefighting operation" chamber president and ceo bettina hannigan said even with an active fire, she doesn't expect changes to people's holiday travel plans.

Bettina hannigan says, "i don't think it's going to affect a lot of people coming over because a lot of people, they come through mapleton and 126 is open.

So we'll see them here.

They'll be here."

If you do decide to make the trip, watch out for drivers and fire personnel.

Allow extra time, drive slowly, and be cautious of fire traffic.

And if you're wondering about the smoke?

Bettina says "i haven't experienced any smoke coming this way.

So far, we're okay" reporting in mapleton, jr, kezi