Fighting fires during coronavirus

Possible.

On the firewatch tonight-- smoke filled part of the rogue valley today.

Check out this time lapse firefighters worked to keep the flames from spreading.

Right now firefighters don't know what caused the fire.

The fire was just off the bear creek greenway in south medford.

It's behind the little league fields near the corner of barnett road and highland drive.

It is under control, although is expected to continue smoking throughout the rest of the day.

Alicia run spoke with firefighters on the scene about how they're responding to fires in light of covid-19.

Alicia says: "firefighting is nothing new for medford fire rescue but firefighting during a pandemic is something that firefighters have had to adjust to."

Kip says: "because of coronavirus we have change several of our response protocols" most of those changes deal with emergency response.

Dispatchers ask a series of questions to identify if the victim or person in need has any covid-19 symptoms. if there are covid-symptoms, firefighters will ask the person to come outside if possible, if not, they will only send one firefighter in to mitigate exposure.

If more help is needed then they respond accordingly.

Firefighters say they are mindful of social distancing but there are circumstances that require them to be closer than 6-feet.

Kip says: ""there's times where you have to help a fire fighter with a hose line or lift something heavy or use a chainsaw and you just you're close to one another" alicia says: "if you were in teh medford area this morning you saw just how much smoke this fire produced, giving us a glimpse at what could be a smokey summer here in the valley, we're talking about those smoke impacts and how long we could see this smoke linger from this fire coming up tonight at 6 - reporting in medford,