All-Volunteer, ‘Redneck Crew’ Credited with Saving Molalla Neighborhood
September 13, 2020 Tyler Francke Community, News, Public Safety
https://canbyfirst.com/all-volunteer-re ... ghborhood/
They came through word of mouth. They were siblings, parents, children, friends and neighbors.
As one resident eloquently put it: “These are the people that we share Hobart and Viking Stadiums with under the Friday night lights. These are the familiar faces in our 4th of July parades and at your kid’s baseball games. These are our family businesses, the people we see in the grocery store, the off duty first responders and even the neighbors you thought didn’t care.”
“They were not firefighters — not volunteer firefighters, even,” another resident said. “They were good old boys who care about the community and getting stuff done.
“They weren’t nothing fancy: Most rolled up in pickup trucks that were 12 different shades of put together. They loaded up 10 guys in the back and away they went.”
They circled up in a smoky, rolling hay field to plan their attack on the fire waiting in a forested canyon below. They followed a lead dozer, blazing a trail down the steep, dense hillside, to cut a wide firebreak and protect the people, livestock and property on Ramsby Road.
This also shows how the resources are very thin because of all of the fires.
I don't live close to this town, but there are enough fires on the west coast to go around. The air quality where I live is awful, and Tuesday where there was a fire starting about 60 miles from here, you would have thought it was the apocalypse. It was very eerie. We are safe (at the moment) though, so I am grateful.Most of the residents interviewed for this story asked not to be named, saying they do not want or need recognition for their heroic actions.
“They don’t want an award or their names in the newspaper,” a woman said. “They just did what they felt needed to be done. They did it to help the grandparents and the kids and the families — to protect everything we have out here.”
Another reason for the anonymity, perhaps, is so none of those involved — including some off-duty firefighters — would face repercussions for working outside of the official chain of command. And so they can speak freely about a government response that they feel more or less abandoned them to fate and the will of nature this week.
“I have not seen one paid crew in the last three days,” said an area resident, who has been helping the volunteers by delivering food and water. “On Thursday, they called off all resources and said the feds were going to come in, and we believed them. Then, my husband went out there early the next morning, and there was not a soul on the fire.”
The long tongues of the Riverside Fire — which has torched 130,000 acres in Clackamas County, including areas of Molalla, Estacada and Colton — were bearing down on them, and they felt they had no choice but to take matters into their own hands.
“It’s me and our community and our neighbors that are going to save each other,” was how one resident put it. “There’s nobody else.”
I just love seeing, even in my own community, people coming out of the woodwork to help and support one another.
