August 18, 2021 2:00 p.m. 

Firefighters on the Skyline Ridge Complex were helped by rain showers on Tuesday.

An update from the Oregon Department of Forestry Incident Management Team 1 said the light precipitation and cooler temperatures helped calm the fires. The finer fuels that usually ignite easily were too wet to burn. Some of the moisture was able to reach pockets of heat, cooling them. The update said sometimes this created smoke or steam, helping firefighters find the hotspots.

While the flammability of smaller fuels changes quickly with any rain or increase in humidity, larger fuels need much more moisture to make them harder to burn. The update said much of what is burning on these fires is large rotting logs lying on the ground. These will continue to take a lot of work to cool, including cutting open burning sections, scraping away layers of coals, and mixing coals with water and dirt to extinguish them.

The update said firefighters continue making good progress mopping up hot areas on the fires. On the Poole Creek Fire, crews cooled the outer edges of most of the fire, including areas burned-out last Friday night and Saturday morning. In many areas, they extinguished most of the heat within 150 feet of the control lines.

Containment on the complex has increased to 81 percent, with the fire burning on 5,760 acres, five miles southeast of Canyonville.