Massachusetts Task Force 1 providing aid in wildfire-ravaged Oregon as haze lingers over New England

Sep. 17--Twenty-five members of the Massachusetts Task Force 1 urban search and rescue team are down in the canyons of Oregon conducting damage assessments and searching for people missing after wildfires ravaged the region.

The task force members flew to Portland, Ore., from Boston on Tuesday to link up with Federal Emergency Management Agency incident support teams heading into burned-out areas to survey the damage to homes, businesses and critical infrastructure such as fire and police stations, officials said.

"They'll be seeing massive damages and whole areas and towns that'll be wiped out," task force program manager Mark Foster said.

Oregon authorities said 16 people were missing and eight people had died as of Tuesday.

"It's just about tracking down locations of people and trying to put a name to a face on everybody," Foster said.

While they won't be fighting fires, the task force members -- part of a larger, Beverly-based team that pulls highly trained firefighters, technical rescue personnel, medical professionals, canine handlers, engineers, physicians and civilians from across New England -- will be surveying wreckage and gathering information crucial to getting communities back up and running. They could be deployed for up to two weeks.

Dozens of fires have burned millions of acres across California, Oregon and Washington, killing more than 30 people and displacing thousands. President Trump has issued an emergency disaster declaration for Oregon, where more than 1,100 homes and nearly 600 other structures have been destroyed.

While the arresting red-orange glow that shrouded major cities like San Francisco for days has begun to lift, smoke from the blazes continues to drift east, creating hazy conditions across New England, calling sports games into question and even reaching Europe.

"The haze that we're seeing now is primarily located in the upper atmosphere," National Weather Service Norton meteorologist Kristie Smith said. "That's why you're seeing the red sun and the lack of sunset and the hazy conditions."

A cold front expected to push through Thursday or Friday could help clear the skies. But for now, Smith says the high-up haze being carried by the jet stream is more of an "interesting phenomenon" than a health risk.

"It's pretty uncommon for us to see this kind of smoke for this period of time," she said. "People are very interested in it."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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