A fire in the Santiam Bluffs area near Jefferson was completely contained Thursday, and all lanes of Interstate 5 at Jefferson were reopened after a series of fires partially shut down the freeway Wednesday.

A fire watch was expected to continue until the mop-up operation was completed sometime today, said Elaine Parrott, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson Fire District.

The Santiam Bluffs fire, which burned about 20 acres, was one of eight that broke out Wednesday afternoon along Interstate 5 between Eugene and Jefferson. The cause is unknown, and Oregon State Police are investigating.

Small fires continued to send firefighters scrambling as low humidity, high temperatures and gusting winds turned the region into a tinderbox.

Because of the high fire danger, the Oregon Department of Forestry on Thursday ordered a shutdown of logging and other commercial forest operations. That means a temporary ban on using power saws, welding and cutting tools and other machinery in the woods.

The danger hit home just before 3 p.m. Thursday, when a fire flared in a harvested wheat near the Corvallis Airport, south of Llewellyn Road, on Venell Farms property. Fortunately farm workers using water tenders were able to contain the fire to a half-acre burn in approximately 30 minutes.

Residents also sprang into action Wednesday afternoon in a usually quiet neighborhood north of Albany and just east of Interstate 5, pouring water and using shovels and their feet to stamp out the flames that jumped across Century Drive, close to their homes.

“I smelled a lot of smoke,” said Barbara Rodriguez, who was at the fire with her husband, Larry. They came down the street, thinking their neighbor’s house was on fire.

As the neighbors continued stomping out flare ups, fire crews drove up and down Century Drive and the freeway, hosing down flames.

The Oregon State Police, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Linn County Sheriff’s Office worked to get traffic off the northbound lanes of the freeway.

The left lane was reopened Wednesday evening. The right lane, which crews patched following a hay-truck fire, reopened at 6:42 Thursday morning.

The first report of a fire was at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday near Eugene.

At about 2 p.m., a 1998 Freightliner tractor-trailer hauling a load of hay and driven by Adam Spencer, 26, of Brownsville, was northbound on the freeway near Millersburg when a fire burning along the shoulder of the freeway ignited the load.

Spencer drove about three miles before he realized that the hay was burning. He pulled to the side of the road near the Dever-Conner exit and escaped the truck, which burned to a blackened hulk.

Around the same time, the brush fire in the Santiam Bluffs area broke out and quickly spread over the hillside. No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported.

Investigators said this morning the hay truck was not responsible for starting the fires.

Arson investigators from OSP and the Oregon Department of Forestry and a truck inspector from ODOT have been assigned to find the cause. Anyone with information is asked to call the OSP Albany office at 967-2026 and speak with Sgt. Craig Flierl or senior trooper Corey Simons.