Darlene Austin was strumming her acoustic guitar in her trailer at Juniper Hilltop Mobile Home Community just north of Bend on Friday afternoon when the power went out. She walked outside to ask her neighbors if they knew why.

The power soon became the least of her concerns. A neighbor told her she needed to leave as soon as possible — a wildfire had started and was rushing south toward their homes.

Within an hour, no one would be allowed in or out of the park.

They walked to where a chain-link fence separates Austin’s trailer from acres of juniper forest and saw trees bursting into flames below clouds of black and white smoke.

“We watched those go up in flames while we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go,” said Jolene Spindler, Austin’s neighbor. “They just go up like Christmas trees.”

Austin grabbed a few belongings and one of her cats. Her other cat she couldn’t find and had to leave behind.

She reached the highway and started sobbing.

“I thought my cat was going to burn to death,” she said.

Read more

Read more

Update: Wildfire on Bend’s northern edge halted, evacuations lowered

But the flames didn’t get any closer. The Milemarker 132 Fire — named for its location just east of U.S. Highway 97 a few miles north of Bend — burned 78 acres before a swarm of firefighters and aircraft knocked down the blaze before nightfall Friday.

As of Saturday afternoon, the fire was 100% contained with crews mopping up hot spots a stone’s throw from the fire’s perimeter.

Its cause is still under investigation.

Firefighters are battling dozens of fires in Oregon that have burned more than a million acres so far.

But none has come quite so close to Central Oregon’s largest city.

“I’m very grateful for the work the fire crews did,” Austin said. “They saved my house.”

Nobody was killed and no structures were destroyed, according to Trish Connolly, deputy chief with Bend Fire & Rescue.

Recipe for fire

Around 11 a.m. on Friday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Central Oregon, noting hot and dry conditions and unstable winds. Temperatures in Bend reached 104 degrees on Friday afternoon.

It was a recipe for fire, said Brian Boyd, battalion chief with Bend Fire & Rescue. Because of this, extra firefighting crews from the state fire marshal’s office were already positioned in Central Oregon.

“We had lots of firefighting crews on the ground pretty darn quickly,” Connolly said.

But there wasn’t much they could do at first. Erratic winds threw embers ahead of torched junipers, making the fire too dangerous to attack head-on.

A slew of urban and rural fire departments, county and federal agencies came to help. To drop water and retardant they called in two helicopters, one very large air tanker, two large air tankers, one single-engine tanker — all orchestrated by a commander with a radio in a plane circling above.

“It felt like we were in a war zone yesterday,” Austin said.

Level 3—Go Now orders were issued for the Juniper Ridge area, between Highway 97 and Deschutes Market Road, south from Cooley Road to Fort Thompson Lane. That included two mobile home parks, several neighborhoods and a community of people living in encampments and mobile homes at Juniper Ridge, a largely undeveloped 500-acre business and industrial property partially owned by the city of Bend on the northeast edge of town.

About two dozen people temporarily fled south to Mountain View High School, where the Red Cross set up a temporary evacuation point with food, water and resources.

Maria Rodriguez left work in Bend and went the opposite way when she heard of the fire. Trying to get back home to her family at Juniper Hilltop Mobile Home Park, she hit a wall of traffic heading north on the highway. Unsure of whether the fire had reached her home, she wanted to get out and run the rest of the way.

Back home, a stream of emergency vehicles had just rolled through the park, telling people to leave immediately and looking for a way to access the fire. Rodriguez’s partner and four children watched from a loaded minivan as plumes of smoke curled behind the trailers. They turned on sprinklers in the front lawn and left for a cemetery across the highway, where the family was reunited.

“It really scared us because of how rapidly it came in,” Rodriguez said as the family prepared lunch on their front lawn Saturday afternoon. Her statements were translated through her son, Isaias Molina. “Mostly the kids, because they didn’t know what it would do. It’s not a good thing. Most people didn’t have anywhere to go except their homes.”

As of Monday afternoon, Level 3 evacuations were scaled back to the area of Juniper Ridge east of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad tracks and north of the city limits to the Central Oregon Irrigation District power generation facility. A Level 1—Be Ready notification was in place for the area west of the railroad tracks to Highway 97 and north of the city limits to Beechcraft Lane, as well as for the neighborhoods north of Cooley Road.

Updated evacuation maps can be found at www.deschutes.org/emergency.

Homeless community threatened

Mike McDonald was riding his bicycle away from a friend’s home Friday afternoon when he saw the smoke rising out of the forest.

He immediately feared the worst: That fire had burned through encampments of trailers and tents where unhoused people are living at Juniper Ridge north of Bend.

McDonald raced around the winding dirt roads alerting people of the blaze nearby.

“I did more running yesterday than I did in a whole year,” he said.

It was fortunate the damage wasn’t worse, he said.

“This whole thing could’ve turned bad real quick.”

Residents of Juniper Ridge gathered near an entrance to the area Saturday afternoon to receive a delivery of sodas, water, pizza and rotisserie chickens from volunteers. While most people living at Juniper Ridge weren’t directly threatened by the fire, a few people hadn’t been back to their homes since the neighbors and first responders altered them of the blaze on Friday.

Jacklynn Westcarroll rounded up some of her pets before she left her shelter, but had to leave cats behind. But she was bracing for the fact that all of her belongings had been gobbled up by the blaze.

“I’m scared to go back,” she said.

Most of the encampments at Juniper Ridge are located a few miles north of where the fire burned among a network of roads. Service providers estimate that 100-200 people live in the area, but there is no official count.

Initial media reports and statements from Bend Fire & Rescue indicated that the fire was burning in the area of the homeless encampments. Bend Fire & Rescue clarified on Saturday that the fire was burning within the Juniper Ridge area, not necessarily in an encampment.

The blaze comes amid growing concerns from some elected officials and residents over wildfire risk from people living on public lands. The county and city of Bend recently applied for a state grant to conduct thinning and fuel reduction at dozens of homeless encampments in the Juniper Ridge area.

Chris Monroe, a Juniper Hilltop resident who evacuated on Friday, said he’s become more worried about the potential for wildfire at Juniper Ridge as more people have moved to the area in recent years.

But he said he doesn’t want to point fingers about the cause of the recent blaze.

“We could’ve been over there because of this fire. We could’ve been homeless,” he said.