The Daily - A Deadly Tinderbox

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

“The entire state is burning.” That was the refrain Jack Healy, our national correspondent, kept hearing when he arrived in the fire zone in Oregon.The scale of the wildfires is dizzying — millions of acres have burned, 30 different blazes are raging and thousands of people have been displaced.Dry conditions, exacerbated by climate change and combined with a windstorm, created the deadly tinderbox.The disaster has proved a fertile ground for misinformation: Widely discredited rumors spread on social media claiming that antifa activists were setting fires and looting.Today, we hear from people living in the fire’s path who told Jack about the toll the flames had exacted.Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading:“The long-term recovery is going to last years,” an emergency management director said as the fires left a humanitarian disaster in their wake.The fearmongering and false rumors that accompanied a tumultuous summer of protests in Oregon have become a volatile complication in the disaster.

From The New York Times, I'm Megan Thewey. This is The Daily. Today, as wildfires continue to rip through parts of the West, Oregon is seeing unprecedented destruction. My colleague, Jack Healy, talks to those living in its path. My colleague, Jack Healy, talks to those living in its path. It's Tuesday, September 15th. So, Jack, tell us what's been happening in Oregon. Unrelenting, fires continuing to rage throughout Oregon.

Well, a million acres of Oregon have burned in recent weeks. With the flames comes that toxic smoke that's blanketed the West Coast, smothering several major cities. As incredibly dry conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change combined with a really historic and devastating windstorm to create some of the worst fire conditions that people here have seen in years, if not generations. Nearly three dozen wildfires so widespread they can be seen from space. There are 30 different fires burning. In Oregon, officials are bracing for a mass fatality incident. In Oregon, officials are bracing for a mass fatality incident. They have killed 10 people and displaced tens of thousands of people across the state, from just outside of Portland all the way down to southern Oregon.

This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state's history. The damage is widespread and the scale is just absolutely mind-boggling. So I flew into Portland last Thursday and when I arrived, the plane touched it down through a thick, impenetrable haze of smoke that has actually grounded a lot of flights and prevented travel in and out of the area pretty severely. Wow. So right after touching down in Portland, as I drove into the fire zone through tiny little towns that were being evacuated and places that were smoldering, one of the things that I kept hearing from residents, whether it was people in Portland or fire officials who were on the front lines of this or people whose houses were being actively evacuated, was this. Everybody just kept saying the entire state is burning.

The scope of these fires is so widespread that it's hard to conceive of what a million acres really looks like. I talked to one Red Cross volunteer who had been trying to put people up in hotels. And one of the challenges that they had been facing is that as hotel rooms fill up around the area where the fires are, they were trying to put people farther out in different towns. But the problem they were running into is that they were encountering refugees from other fires the farther out they put people.

So it was like these disasters were sort of spreading and colliding as you went south from Portland to Salem to Eugene to Medford. So you're hearing that the whole state is on fire and now you have to cover it. Where are some of the places you go? So I went to an evacuation site in Salem at the state fairgrounds. There were a lot of people sleeping in their cars and just parked in the parking lot waiting for some motel or some room that was close by that would take a pet or accommodate their family. What's your name, ma'am? Carla. With a K or a C? C. My sister is Cindy. Two of the people I met were Carla Heath and Cindy Essman. They're two sisters. I'm 64. Okay, okay. And Cindy? Is 67.

And for the past week or so, they have been sleeping in the front seats of their silver Buick Encore. The seats go back. It's comfortable. We're actually sleeping. That's amazing. It is. I know you do what you have to do at this point. Yeah. You know, and that way everybody can stay together. They spent two nights in the parking lot of a shopping center. Yeah, the Bymark Shopping Center in Staten.

And they decamped to the Oregon State Fairgrounds just because the smoke was getting so terrible that it was getting hard to breathe. Just the smoke in Staten is so bad? Oh, you could cut it with a knife. It's so bad. Wow. That's why we're here. Three birds, two dogs.

Oh, really? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, the birds were on the other side. Their house survived, and they've been able, like some other residents, to kind of return and check on it and go back and forth as the fires have continued to kind of chew through the landscape. It's been interesting, let's just put it that way. They don't want us to go back.

No, they don't want us to go back now. Oh, the smoke is horrible there now. But they've been really concerned about sort of what they're going to do long term and how long they're going to be evacuated from their house. Is your patient starting to wear thin or you seem like you're in pretty good spirits about all this? We're keeping a good, we're keeping a positive attitude about this. Not at first, but we're getting better. Now that we're out, out, I think things are looking up.

Well, ladies, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It was nice meeting you. Take care. So Jack, where do you go next after talking to those sisters? So after I spent some time talking to other evacuees, I decided to head up closer to the burn zone. And as you drive up, the air just gets worse and worse

and the smoke gets thicker and thicker until it's basically like the most noxious cloud you've ever been in. As I'm driving, I have the air conditioning blasting and trying to recirculate air through the cab of this white Toyota pickup truck that I've rented to get around. And I'm wearing an N95 mask inside the car in an attempt to keep as much of this fine particulate matter that just fills the air from entering my lungs. And as you push farther into the areas that have

been burned, you start to see telltale signs of what the fire has wrought along the roadside. You see fields that look like Hawaiian black sand beaches because the fires have just scoured them the color of charcoal. You see areas that are totally unburnt and then you turn a corner and there's what's left of a house, just this sort of skeleton of twisted metal and a single chimney standing up like a like a solitary soldier standing guard or something. And things get worse and worse the farther east you go, where these little communities of retirees and recreational enthusiasts and summertime campers that were just really devastated. Hey, how are you, sir? Good. Hey, I'm a newspaper reporter covering the wildfires.

Okay. When I pulled into the tiny town of Gates... Are you guys sort of part of the crews of residents who are just like trying to protect your places? That's my house. It's my friend Sean. He's just here for the cause. Sean, hey, I'm Jack.

Mike. Mike, great to meet you. I met a little cluster of neighbors who had decided to stick it out inside of the fire zone, you know, inside of this part of the area that had been evacuated and cleared out because they were determined to try to save their homes. And if we didn't come back in here, my house would be gone because there's fires going around and we put out.

Oh, so you actually came back in and rushed. I've been here since then. He's been here the whole time. No kidding. That's amazing, John. I just bought the house in November, man. He's been here since then. He's been here the whole time. No kidding.

That's amazing, Darren. I just bought the house in November, man. I've been trying to stay here, but I got a wife calling me at home going, get out. They were taking a break from days of driving up and down the roads. So you think it just jumped from house to house to house? Yeah. I was there with other people for 11 hours trying to put that town out. Looking for little spot fires or smoldering areas of the woods when I got there. Having a beer, looks like you're taking a break from helping.

Yeah, we just sent a truck down and he's filling up with the fire hydrant down there. They were actually cracking open a couple beers and waiting for another couple of neighbors to return to their houses with a refill of water supplies from one of the local fire departments. Yeah, I should take you down to my house. There's three houses down. I'll tell you right where the fire stops. They walked me around the back of their homes and showed me the hillsides right immediately behind their houses. This was on fire.

This is crazy. When I came back, this was on fire. We didn't come back. These houses were weird. That had burned up and almost swallowed up their houses. They lost everything. Jeez. Their house is gone.

They've also armed themselves with shotguns and sidearms. Are you guys carrying because you're concerned about looters or would you normally be carrying anyways, even if this wasn't like a fire situation with no law enforcement? Both. Okay. Okay. We carry anyway. Yeah. I have my underwear drawers locked and loaded. It's ready to go. Open carry like this. I usually wouldn't walk around like this. Yeah. But with everything going on, I absolutely would. Yeah. They say they are worried about looters and outsiders coming in to rob their places or exploit the evacuations to carry out looting. The sheriffs are going through and they're tagging mailboxes with the caution tape. And that indicates we've checked and no one's here.

Which is like an invitation. Which for looters means, oh, there's no one there. And is the looting a real thing that's happening? Is that a real threat at this time? Well, to a certain extent, yeah. What has happened in some cases is that there have been some reports and arrests of looting. and arrests of looting. But what's also happened, though,

is that there have been a bunch of rumors and sort of swarms of misinformation circulating on social media about some alleged organized effort by Antifa to set fires or carry out sort of organized sprees of robberies in communities that have been evacuated, you know, kind of really fan the flames of a climate of fear right now, you know, as people try to wait

for some sort of semblance of order or normalcy, really, to be restored. So it sounds like these guys feel like they are caught between the danger of the fire itself and the potential fear of someone breaking into their homes. And they have decided that staying and protecting their homes is worth the risk of the fire. I think that is the essential calculation for so many people. It's do you risk your house burning down or do you risk just not knowing what's happening

at what's probably your biggest economic asset and the source of so many years of work? Or do you leave and stay safe personally? People across the state are making that individual calculation for themselves. It's the apocalypse, man. The whole state's burned down. I've never seen anything like it.

I've never seen anything like it. We'll be right back. So, Jack, after you leave the town of Gates, where do you go next? Well, I went to the Black Bear Lodge, a little motel in Salem, where evacuees have been staying for the past week. And there I met Travis and Jane James. Do you guys want to chat out here? Okay, great. And they are from the tiny little communities of Detroit and Idana.

little communities of Detroit and Aidana. And Detroit suffered probably some of the worst devastation in the fires outside of Portland. About 70% of the businesses and homes in this little lakeside resort town were destroyed, including cafes, a motel, a little restaurant, the market, and even the city hall was destroyed. Wow. The town was basically wiped off the map. And what did Travis and Jane tell you? Well, Travis and Jane had a pretty harrowing story of escape. So just take me back to Monday, I guess it was,

when the wind started to really kick up. What have you guys been doing that day? Just watering everything. Watering everything because the lieutenant said, water, water. So we were watering the perimeter. Some people from Detroit and Idana were able to get out earlier. They left when evacuation was only a suggestion or a possibility. Didn't want to leave because we just

got the house. That was my stupid mistake, thinking that I could save the house. They had been hoping that they could stay and protect their house. But around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, it was

just getting to be way too dangerous. It was gray. It was smoky. It was getting bad. It was orange outside. We had limbs of trees coming down on our house, totally burnt. Oh, wow. Burnt limbs were raining onto their house, as well as burning pine cones and other pieces of ash and all this other debris that was rising on the column of heat from this fire and just being thrown for miles. When that happened, we got the code three, get out now. How did it, how did it

arrive? Did your phones go off? Okay. They finally got the alert. And so had you guys, like, already, like, assembled, like, a bag or anything like that? We came out with a suitcase and two dogs. Okay. They ran out of the house and started to drive down the mountain to try to get to safety. But what happened is, as they're driving through these walls of fire, trees are falling around them. They're exploding as they're driving through these walls of fire, trees are falling around them. They're exploding as they drive. We went around, a tree had fallen down on the highway.

We went around it, and as soon as we went around it, the rock slide hit us. And their car smashes into a rock slide, and they get a flat tire. And so, yeah, so what happens then? The tire blows? The tire blows. In the middle of a flat tire. And so, yeah, so what happens then? The tire blows or... Tire blows. In the middle of a forest fire.

Wow. And so how do you... We couldn't change the tire. How do you take the tire off? You can't. We didn't. They had no choice but to turn around and head back to Detroit,

where they had just come from. Put everything back, put the dogs back in and then ride on the rim another seven miles back to Detroit. And the entire forest is basically exploding around them. Are you talking to each other during all this? What are you doing? Are you filming or just? I was filming a little bit. I was screaming at him. Yeah. What were you saying?

So what do they do once they get back to Detroit, which is on fire? get back to Detroit, which is on fire. Which is on fire. So Travis and Jane and about 70 other refugees from this fire ended up taking shelter at a boat dock that was sort of a clearing, an area that was not immediately surrounded by trees. Then they were going to wait there until some National Guard helicopters could land and

evacuate them by air. They had to cut a tree because we were surrounded. We couldn't get out, so they were going to bring, what, they had three helicopters hovering. They had pay box up from the National Guard place right down here in Salem. Wow. They were on station for about four and a half hours before they had to abort because of fuel. Yeah, because they couldn't come down. So they were just kind of like hovering and hovering. Yeah, the wind was blowing 65 miles an hour, so they couldn't land. They waited there for hours, but those helicopters could never come in because the winds were just too rough. And what is happening with the fire during all of this?

I mean, the fire is just burning all around them, basically. They're getting covered in debris and ash. And, you know, as Jane said, we were surrounded. We couldn't get out. How many people would you say were there? When we left, it was 40 vehicles and 78 people. Wow, wow. They just kept coming in from all over the place.

Nobody could get out. They just kept coming in from all over the place. Nobody could get out. They just kept coming in and coming in. Wow. And so what do they do? What is the plan? Well, they were going to move us all down to the docks. Yeah, they told us to grab the fire trucks around us, the water trucks that put a big water barrier. The plan was to essentially make a last stand against the fire. That's what the fire department called it. And so essentially the plan was to essentially make a last stand against the fire. That's what the fire department called it. And so essentially the plan was the fire trucks were going to be like your last wall of defense. Yes.

Which would try to create a sort of wall or barrier between them and the fire and that they would spray as much water between the people and the encroaching flames as possible and just try to hold out as long as they could. But ultimately what happened is that... Then they got an okay to leave. So we all lined up, followed the fire trucks out. Someone with the Forest Service was able to find another way out of there. And they found an evacuation route

and they assembled a convoy of fire trucks, RVs, pickup trucks, and they headed out of there on a narrow little road with, you know, smoke and flames roaring up on either side of it. And there's all this fire on the left-hand side. Trees were falling down. Falling down. And we're going. We had to stop a couple of times.

So the fire department could get out. They're out there chainsawing. Wow. Burning trees. They're chainsawing and pulling them out with their trucks so we could keep Wow. Yeah. And during that drive, they sort of crept along and tried to stay together as best they could so that people would not get detoured into other fire zones. Because as they are driving, they are skirting along the edge of another massive fire that is burning just to the north of another massive fire that is burning

just to the north of the one that had just consumed their community. It was just a last-minute make-or-break thing. It was like, we got one shot to get out of here. It's on fire, but we're going to go, so we win. From the fire department. And I'm going to tell you, I ran a Detroit fire department. They— A bunch of studs.

Oh, my gosh. They are—they get so many kudos from us. Wow. Wow. They had no heroes until that day. They, oh my gosh, they are, they get so many kudos from us. Wow. They had no heroes until that day. Jane was still really distraught and really traumatized by this. But I, I went into complete meltdown. When we talked, it had been five days or so.

And just thinking about that trip was still something that brought her to tears. I couldn't stop crying. It was... Can you see death? It humbles you even more than you are. All I did the whole time was just cry. I could not stop crying. He kept trying. I can't.

It was just way too much. And so what is their plan now? What will they do once the fires stop? Well, their house survived. They sent the lieutenant of Idana and Detroit Fire Department sent me a picture of our house. Oh, OK. So there it is. That's great. Our house. Wow. That's great. I guess the fire burnt right up to our property line. They were some of the lucky ones, and their plan is to go back.

And I've actually been struck by how many people in these places that have burned down are planning to go back. And whether it's just return to a house that is now surrounded by a landscape of char, or whether it's to go back and try to rebuild from nothing again, people said that this had sort of increased in some ways their commitment to these communities that are incredibly threatened and are going to be even more threatened and even more at peril as the effects of climate change grow more pronounced. Yeah, Jack, my understanding is that these fires aren't going anywhere. So how did these people square those realities? That the land they live on is under increased threat of destruction,

but that they also want to try to rebuild their lives there. Are you guys going to go back? I mean, go back and live there? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Tell me why. It's beautiful up there. It's God's country up there. I could sit outside for hours just watching the wildlife.

Yeah. Chipmunks and squirrels. We've got three families of chipmunks. We've got a koala bear squirrel. We've got chubs. I think for a lot of the people that I've talked to, there is a certain amount of wishful thinking, hoping that this fire was just some sort of historically aberrant event, that the winds that ignited these firestorms won't flare up again, that somehow things will get better. But at a certain point, I think others are starting to, you know, wonder whether they can just sort of live with the increased risk of living in a fire zone. Because

if you look outside your window across the West, we sort of all are living in some kind of fire zone. Even if you live in San Francisco or L.A. or Seattle or Portland, you're miles away from any place, any hillside that's going to burn down and surround your family. You're still socked in by smoke, and you're still contending with incredibly dirty and in some cases dangerous air conditions. And honestly, I'm one of them.

I live in Colorado, and I live on the side of a hill in a pretty wildfire prone part of Colorado. And, you know, I know that climate change is real, that the risks of these fires are getting worse as hotter temperatures dry out the brush and as weather patterns shift. But I think that there is a certain love and commitment that people have to these communities and in the mountains, in forests, that they're not willing to give up. Not to mention the fact that for so many people, you're sort of locked into your home. A lot of people don't have the ease of just, you know, pulling up stakes and leaving. It's what so many of the people in Detroit or Idana or Gates had invested their entire lives and savings and a lifetime of work into. And to leave, even when the fire is banging down your door

and climate change is screaming its presence, to leave, it's a really difficult thing. Well, thank you, Jack. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. It'll start getting cooler. You just watch. I wish science agreed with you.

I don't think science knows, actually. On Monday, while meeting with leaders in California about the wildfires there, President Trump brushed off a question about climate change, suggesting instead that the state had failed to properly manage its forests. When you have years of leaves, dried leaves on the ground, it just sets it up. It's really a fuel for a fire. So they have to do something about it. Meanwhile, in a campaign speech, Joe Biden attacked Trump's record on

climate change, saying his inaction and denial had fed destruction in California and Oregon. If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater? And now that I have a clear understanding of what happened, I have to let you, the public, know what steps I am taking today to deal with our failures. Today is Chief Singletary's last day. Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester, New York, announced she was firing the city's police chief two weeks before he was scheduled to voluntarily step down because of the department's handling of the death of Daniel Prude.

We have a pervasive problem in the Rochester Police Department, one that views everything through the eyes of the badge and not the citizens we serve. That's it for The Daily i'm megan tooey michael barbaro will be back next week see you tomorrow