Judy Urness could hear the fire alarms going off in the background Tuesday as she called her son Charlie to tell him to stop trying to save their house on Emerson Loop Road and just get out.
“But he didn’t listen to me,” she said of her 24-year-old son. “But my house is standing. I guess he gets away with it this time.”
While she’d driven horses to safety in the early hours of the ongoing Substation Fire, Charlie and a swarm of neighbors had stayed behind to fight fire. Rafters below him were burning, and they knocked holes in walls and ceilings to knock out the fire.
Afterward, her house was filled with water and smoke, but salvage began quickly. She and husband Mike are living in their motor home on their property while a stream of repair and cleaning people are fixing the house and contents.
She’s been overwhelmed with the outpouring of community support. “Every day we’ve had people stop by and give us food, offer to give us places to stay. I mean, so many I can’t respond to them all.”
Farmers have “a special bond,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life, this is the way it’s been forever. This is a fire like I’ve never seen before, but when a fire starts, everybody stops what they’re doing and they go to the fire.”
Because this fire got “so big so fast, a lot of people had to kind of retreat and take care of their own for awhile.”
Her emotions have run the gamut. “Oh, it’s sad. I’m very thankful, I’m very blessed. It’s kind of just a whirlwind, because it could’ve been so much worse. And when this first happened, I kept saying nobody got hurt and that’s all that matters, and now, that’s not the case,” she said, referring to the death Wednesday of John Ruby, who was found next to a burned tractor.
“And for the people that lost their houses that burned to the ground, and lost lives, it’s horrible.”
It was her property that was prominently featured in early news footage of the ongoing Substation Fire, showing several outbuildings and an unoccupied home burning down. She’s watched part of the video, but “I just didn’t want to watch it at that point. I will at some point.”
“It’s just horrible,” she said of the loss. “It’s changed the whole layout of our property, what it looks and what it feels like. It’s an eerie feeling. There was shade and now there’s not shade. It’s opened it up more.”
But, she added, “I mean, our house is still standing, and I can’t ask for any more.”
Lost was a grain elevator, two barns, a garage and large shop and a house that was vacant. Her brother and sister-in-law, who farm the property, lost a couple tractors and at least a truck and trailer, “and a lot of wheat crop.”
In the spirit of farmers helping farmers, Urness was headed home from work after hearing her own home was possibly under threat when she saw Amy Sugg’s house was also in peril.
She stopped and helped haul stuff out of the house for about 30 minutes when she got a call that she needed to hurry home.
She quickly began getting the horse trailer ready, and as she was preparing to load, the sheriff’s office showed up to warn them to be ready to leave. Wasco County Chief Deputy Scott Williams helped her load up three of her four horses. She didn’t have room to take them all.
“I just opened the gate. I had to make a choice,” Urness said. “I opened the gate and let her go and hoped for the best.” When she got home, she found that the horse, Foxy, “just hung around and was really good.”
She bundled their dog with her, “and unfortunately, I think we lost our cat.” She distributed her horses to Stage Stop Arena, with Brandy and Ken Schanno, and also to Shawn Wilkinson at Auction Sales. “They’re still there,” she said Thursday afternoon.
She’d also loaded up important things from the house — “what I could think to grab, anyway.”
She came back after dropping off horses to help cut down the burning trees around the house, to keep them from catching the house on fire again. “Our property was just glowing in the dark.”
Seeing the damage was “very emotional. I’ve lived here, I raised my kids here.”Her daughter Mackenzie came home from Salem to help.
Then they went to her dad, John Fulton’s, house to stay the night. He lives on Fifteenmile. “He’s a retired farmer, he had a bunch of land that was actually burning too.”
The community help has been “absolutely unbelievable,” she said. “The next day, I had a friend, a neighbor, that came in and brought me a load of hay. I had people coming down helping me go through my house, help it get ready starting to clean up.”
The basement and wiring will have to be redone, and the contents were all professionally cleaned, and all their clothes were hauled off by a Beaverton company that specializes in fixing smoke damage.
“It’s so bizarre, now I have no clothes because they’re all being cleaned.”
She lauded her insurance agent, Dean Dollarhide of State Farm, for coming out to help clean. He even helped put out hotspots. “I cannot say enough. I will never complain about paying my insurance premium, ever.”
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