The 2020 Oregon Wildfires¶
My heart breaks for the people in Los Angeles, who are dealing with major wildfires at the moment. These stories are always hard for me, because I’ve had my own experience with wildfire in 2020, and I hate that I have to relive it every year seeing so many other people suffer similar traumas. This is that story.
House sitting for horses¶
In September 2020 we were house sitting for some folks that live in the Cascade foothills outside of Molalla, Oregon. Watching 2 horses and 2 cats, it was an idyllic 20 acre property with beautiful gardens and horse pastures.
One of our primary tasks along with caring for the animals was to water and mow the lawn every week to ensure a defensible space around the house.
On the morning of September 8, we woke up with no power because of a wind storm the night before. Being out in the country, we didn’t have reliable cell service, and depended on the Wifi for internet and phone service. I walked up a hill to get service, and got a text from the owners about possible fires in the area, though the morning was still clear and bright. I then went back down to the house and started a generator so we could get internet and look into the situation.
Let’s have a plan¶
We looked at the fire maps, and it did show a fire getting closer to the house, but not obviously worrisome. We didn’t panic, but kind of numbly started to think about how we might evacuate. Luckily the owners had a great fire contingency plan, but we still needed to put it into action.
We started to make sure we had a plan:
Let’s figure out where the cat carriers are, just in case we need them.
Let’s make sure we know how to horses. The owners had left a truck and trailer, but the horses hadn’t been trailered in years.
Let’s ask the owners if there’s anything they care deeply about that we can gather.
Let’s get our own things in order.
The realization that everything you see might burn to a crisp is one that doesn’t come all at once. You slowly build from “let’s have a plan” to “we need to get out of here ASAP”, if you’re lucky like we were.
We started to pack things up around 10am, at 11:13am I took a photo of the smoke we could see in the distance.
It looked far off, but something that is notable. By 12:07, the world started to change. The sky turned a deep red, the smoke started to choke when you went outside, and the animals got more and more nervous.
At this point, we decided we needed to load cats in the carrier and the horses in the trailer. The cats were nervous, but got into the carriers without much fuss. We were worried about the horses because they hadn’t been trailered in so long. Luckily my wife has a lifetime of horse experience, and we were able to load the horses with only about 10 minutes of coaxing and carrots.
By about 1:00pm we had all the animals loaded, and just needed to grab our stuff from the house and get out of there. As we went back into the house the landline phone rang, it was a “reverse 911” automated call, telling us we were under a “Level 3 - GO NOW” evacuation order. At this point, I still didn’t quite believe what was happening, and tried to make a quick lunch for the road, but my wife wisely said we should get out of there ASAP.
We grabbed the clothes we’d gathered for an overnight trip away, the important documents and valuable from the owners, and got out of there. We had 2 cars, and had to leave one behind because I drove the horse trailer out.
We were able to evacuate the horses to Portland, and luckily we had friends that were out of town, so we could stay at their house with the cats. We only brought enough clothes for 2 nights, but ended up staying in Portland for almost a week. The owners of the house came back once it was clear the fire was a serious danger to their house, and stayed in an RV with friends while we all watched the fire maps together.
Aftermath¶
The fire did burn through their property around September 10. A number of the houses around them burned down. Their horse barn, fields, and many trees burned, but the house was saved. Many other houses in the area were saved by a brave group of locals who came to the rescue, because the fire response was spread so thin with so many fires.
We were fortunate to be able to save the animals and the house, but this experience makes me so much more aware the heartache and worry that everyone dealing with a fire evacuation goes through. My heart goes out to everyone in this situation ❤️
