Oregon residents return to charred towns

A couple on the site of their fire-gutted home in Talent, Oregon, last Saturday. A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington states has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, killing more than two doz
A couple on the site of their fire-gutted home in Talent, Oregon, last Saturday. A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington states has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, killing more than two dozen people since early August. PHOTO: REUTERS

TALENT (Oregon) • Search-and-rescue teams, with dogs in tow, were deployed across the blackened ruins of southern Oregon towns on Sunday even as smouldering wildfires continued to ravage US Pacific Coast states after causing widespread destruction.

A blitz of wildfires across Oregon, California and Washington has destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns this summer, scorching over 1.6 million hectares and killing more than two dozen people since early August. More than 30,000 firefighters are battling the blazes.

Crews in Oregon's Jackson County were hoping to venture into rural areas where the Almeda Fire has abated slightly with slowing winds, sending up thick plumes of smoke as the embers burned. From Medford through the neighbouring communities of Phoenix and Talent, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99.

Community donation centres popped up around Jackson County over the weekend, including one in the parking lot of Home Depot in Phoenix, where farmers showed up with a pick-up truck bed full of watermelons and people donated water and other supplies.

Farther north in Clackamas County, Mr Dane Valentine, 28, showed a Reuters journalist the remains of his house. "This is my home," he said. "Yep. All gone."

Down the road, a woman with a Trump 2020 sign on her home, pointed a shotgun at the journalist and shouted at him to leave.

"You're the reason they're setting fires up here," she said, perhaps referring to false rumours that the wildfires were started by left-wing activists.

After four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped fire crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked last week.

Still, emergency officials worried that the shifting weather might not be enough to quell the fires.

"We're concerned that the incoming front is not going to provide a lot of rain here in the Medford region and it's going to bring increased winds," Bureau of Land Management spokesman Kyle Sullivan told Reuters on Sunday.

At least 10 people have been killed in Oregon, according to the Office of Emergency Management. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has said dozens of people remain missing across three counties.

There were 34 active fires burning in Oregon as of Sunday morning, according to the website of the Office of Emergency Management.

Drought conditions, extreme temperatures and high winds in Oregon created the "perfect firestorm" for the blazes to grow, Ms Brown, a Democrat, told CBS' Face The Nation on Sunday. "This is a wake-up call for all of us that we've got to do everything in our power to tackle climate change," she added.

President Donald Trump was set to travel to California yesterday to be briefed about the wildfires while his Democratic rival Joe Biden had planned a speech on the matter from Delaware, bringing climate change to the forefront of the presidential campaign.

Mr Trump, a Republican who pulled the United States out of the Paris accord on global warming because he found it too costly, has expressed his view that poor forest management is partly to blame for the raging fires.

Democrats have emphasised that climate change has played a role, and Mr Biden was expected to emphasise that in his remarks.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 15, 2020, with the headline Oregon residents return to charred towns. Subscribe