Wildfires left almost nothing behind
An Oregon town’s daunting challenge to rebuild
DET ROIT , Or e . • Many people grow emotionally attached to their houses. Most don’t feel the kind of bond that Terry Taylor did.
The firefighter literally built his second home in Oregon’s picturesque Cascade mountains from the foundations up.
He finished the “beautiful two- storey house” in 2015 after months of sweat and tears, between shifts battling blazes in Beaverton, just outside Portland. Then four weeks ago, the home disappeared in minutes, destroyed by two monster wildfires that converged on this idyllic lakeside town and levelled virtually all of its 400 or so homes and other buildings.
The day after the highway into town was finally reopened last week, Taylor, 52, was shovelling heaps of charred, mangled debris into green garbage bags. Little else remained of his house.
“I poured the foundation, I put in every nail. My oldest son helped when he was out of school for the summer,” Taylor said. “I think that’s the hardest part. People don’t understand. When you actually build a home … there’s a special kind of hurt.”
Detroit was one of five small Oregon towns almost completely decimated by fires that have torn through 1.2 million acres of the state’s forest, part of a historically ruinous season of conflagrations up and down the U. S. Pacific Northwest. On top of the physical devastation, nine people died in Oregon.
With huge tracts burning in Washington to the north and California to the south, those neighbours could do little to help Oregon with its wildfires. So five provinces in Canada and 39 other states lent firefighters, some of the Canadians tackling one of the blazes that had doomed Detroit.
“Our Canadian partners were of incredible assistance,” says Joy Krawczyk of the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Structures also burned to the ground further west of here, within a 40- minute drive of Salem, the state capital, and 90 minutes from greater Portland with its 2.5 million souls.
The immediate crisis has passed but now residents are quietly facing up to a formidable challenge: trying to rebuild a community that simply ceased to exist, physically at least, on September 8 of this year.
Some residents also suspect the catastrophe could have been avoided entirely and are considering legal action against authorities.
Most of Detroit’s houses were nestled in the dense woods and many of those trees, though burnt and denuded, were still standing last week. So were the sturdier signs of human habitation, like decorative gates and brick chimneys.
But the lots are now mostly just fields of blackened debris. Along the lake, a patio table and chairs here, a basketball net there, are all that’s left of a string of properties that once had stunning views over the water and surrounding hills. The burnt-out hull of a fire truck leans next to where the firehall used to stand.
The wildfires underscored the threat posed by climate change — which experts say was partly to blame for the number and ferocity of blazes — and increased tensions between the three affected states’ Democratic administrations and President Donald Trump.
But for those whose homes went up in flames in Detroit, the disaster was deeply personal.
“I wept,” said Troy Kirk, 55, when he and partner, Maria Winwood, first saw the burnt traces of the house they had lived in for 26 years. “It was sad, devastating. Just memories popping through your head.”
A nearby rental home owned by Winwood was also immolated.
Kirk pointed sadly to the scorched husk of a 1951 Ford pickup truck in his driveway.
“It was in mint condition,” he lamented.
Winwood managed to recover an urn containing the ashes of her late husband, but she lost an array of antiques, including “old, old, old” rocking horses, plus fine china and other memorabilia.
“How would we go about moving to Canada?” Kirk asks a National Post reporter with a bitter laugh.
This is not the first time that Detroit — named for the Michigan natives who migrated here during its heyday as a logging centre — has disappeared.
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished what was then one of the world’s largest dams in 1952, the resulting scenic lake flooded out the old town site. The community that burned down last month was built anew, just above the water line.
As the forestry industry waned, Detroit became predominately a tourist destination. About 80 per cent of its homeowners lived there part- time, though many spent big chunks of the year in the area, said full- time resident Tim Luke.
The state’s two biggest 2020 fires — Beachie Creek and Lionshead — began kilometres away in the middle of August, one the result of a lightning strike, the other of unknown origin. For three weeks, they smouldered in small pockets of remote forest and seemed to pose little danger to humans.
Then a windstorm bringing gusts of 80 kilometres an hour erupted on Labour Day, and the fires took on a new, more menacing life. Racing toward Detroit from opposite directions, they eventually razed a combined 400,000 acres and trapped the town in a militarylike pincer movement.
When Kirk and Winwood realized how much danger they were in it was almost too late.
The power went off at 7 p.m. on Sept. 6, leaving them literally in the dark.
Then at 1: 30 a. m., the order came to leave, immediately. The couple drove into town and for the first time could see fire close by. They just managed to get out, flames licking either side of the highway.
The couple had been thinking seriously of selling and moving to Portland to be closer to their grandchildren. The fire has moved that plan forward.
Fellow resident Luke was away when the fires enveloped Detroit, wiping out his home. It was one of the last houses built when the new town was first erected. Now it’s gone, along with three prized RZR all- terrain vehicles.
“I don’t get all emotional, but it’s heart-wrenching,” he said.
“I had spent the last year remodelling the exterior and fixing all the dry rot and everything.”
Despite that, he is actually looking forward to rebuilding, and predicts the town will end up better than ever.
The president of a whitewater-raft-making company, he’s running for municipal council, saying the municipality needs his “get- it- done attitude.”
What’s worrisome, he said, is that new houses generally have to be put up within two years to be eligible for insurance payouts. But officials in Paradise, Calif., have told Detroit that only 24 out of hundreds of homes destroyed by 2018’s deadly Camp Fire there have been replaced, the rebuilding slowed by red tape.
Something else bothers Luke, too — a sense that the Beachie Creek fire could have been extinguished long before it threatened structures, as it slowly consumed a few acres deep in the woods. He’s not alone and has been in contact with homeowners interested in launching a class-action lawsuit.
For days, said Winwood, people could see a plume of smoke in the distance.
“It wasn’t handled right at all,” she asserts. “It could have been put out.”
An Oregon Department of Forestry spokeswoman said Beachie originated on federal land and referred the National Post to a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Taylor was focused on a more mundane task last week, filling bag after bag with the vestiges of his home, which he will try to rebuild himself.
He and his wife had planned to retire here. She lived in the house more than half of the time and Taylor’s son called it home as he attended law school in nearby Salem.
The student evacuated just in time. But he lost an irreplaceable, personalized equipment bag from his stint on the University of Portland basketball team.
All his text books — at a time when COVID- 19 has closed the campus bookstore — also went up in smoke.
“We lost a lot, but he lost everything,” said Taylor. “Everything a 24- year- old would have in life is gone.”
I DON’T GET ALL EMOTIONAL, BUT IT’S HEART-WRENCHING.