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PHOENIX, Oregon – Matt Manson stared at the burned corpse of his pick-up truck Friday, which was found in a blackened driveway in front of a smoldering pile of debris that was once his home.
Like other residents of the small farming town of Phoenix, Oregon, he was in shock when he returned to his neighborhood and saw how quickly the Alameda Drive wildfire had engulfed his home and upset his life.
“The fire melted my truck’s engine, it drained down the driveway,” said Manson, a 43-year-old construction worker. “I lost everything. I lost all my tools. My truck. I can’t work. I lost $ 30,000 worth of guitars. Everything is gone.”
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Manson, who now only has a backpack with a change of clothes, struggled to find the words to describe how fire had devastated the city that sits near the green Siskiyou Mountains, about 210 miles south of Portland. The trees that lined his street were now just blackened skeletal remains.
“It seems like a war just happened here,” he said.
A melted basketball backboard is seen after wildfires destroyed a neighborhood in Bear Creek, Phoenix, Oregon, on September 10, 2020 (Photo: Reuters / Carlos Barria).
Half a million people in Oregon were ordered to evacuate as of Friday as dozens of wildfires engulfed parched field and smoke darkened skies across the state, along with neighboring California and Washington.
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In Phoenix, the smoke was still thick in the air as many of its 4,600 residents tried to understand the extent of the damage. Local authorities said the fire destroyed a large part of the city. State firefighters said at least two people were killed and four injured, and the fire was 20 percent contained as of Friday afternoon.
Doris Peterson, 85, said she only had time to grab Toby, her 12-year-old Chihuahua, when she and her husband, Richard, fled after police knocked on their door around noon Tuesday and told them to just they had a few minutes to get out. .
A damaged home and car are seen in a mobile home park destroyed by fire on September 10, 2020 in Phoenix, Oregon. (Photo: David Ryder / Getty Images / AFP)
They spent five hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic before finding a hotel room in Grants Pass, Oregon, 35 miles (56 km) down Interstate 5.
On Friday, she and her husband sat in their car on a baseball field north of Phoenix, waiting to be escorted by police to their neighborhood. She was preparing for the worst, but she was still waiting for a miracle.
“I called my landline – and the answering machine answered!” she said. “My neighbor’s next door doesn’t answer. Maybe our house survived.”
