When the Babb Road Fire swept through Malden in September, it wiped out the small town with 80 to 90 percent of structures being lost, Kathy Bryson reported.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"destruction](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/greaternw.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/malden-fire-3.jpg?resize=471%2C353&ssl=1\")
\u201cThere is still a lot of debris,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s just nothing there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Except, of course, for the RVs parked in the middle of town, with residents who haul in water from elsewhere to their makeshift homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Typically, multi-response agencies work to set up a long-term recovery group, but that has been hard to establish in Malden since nearly everyone there is a survivor, Bryson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t want to leave,\u201d she said. \u201cThey went through the winter in RVs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bryson made her second trip to the area in April to check on progress and meet with other members of the newly formed Pine Creek Community Restoration Group. Through United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), Bryson has been able to train eight volunteer disaster case managers for the Pine Creek fire restoration group. Disaster case managers help survivors navigate the process of re-building, applying for assistance from the federal government, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the people impacted were either uninsured or underinsured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bryson said she hopes as the long-term recovery group is established here in this small town located 40 miles south of Spokane, they can begin applying for grants to begin the rebuilding process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis will be a long recovery,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Almeda Fire in southern Oregon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Jackson County alone, more than 2,300 homes were destroyed by the Almeda Fire that swept through the towns of Phoenix and Talent \u2013 located between Medford and Ashland in southern Oregon \u2013 on Sept. 8, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Moseler, across Oregon more than 4,000 homes were destroyed as wildfires raged up and down the Interstate 5 corridor in early and mid-September.<\/p>\n\n\n United Methodist Churches in southern Oregon were prepared to shelter and offered initial assistance in the form of hygiene kit distribution and more. As the wildfires raged Upper Rogue Valley UMC was the landing spot for several helicopters dropping fire retardant nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the churches continue to be involved, Moseler said. Rev. Dr. Brett Strobel, pastor at Ashland UMC, has been part of the recovery group\u2019s emotional and spiritual care committee. Medford UMC has provided space for Unete, a non-profit organization that supports farm workers and immigrant advocacy. The vast majority of those impacted by the Almeda Fire were Hispanic\/Latinx families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moseler said there is still a lot of organizing work that needs to be done to even apply for grant funds from UMCOR to support long-term recovery work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recovering in Okanogan \u2013 again<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When wildfires rolled through the Okanogan area of northcentral Washington in September 2020, they passed by some of the homes and structures that had just been finished rebuilding after devastating wildfires in 2014 and 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe still have a handful of open cases from the 2014-2015 fires,\u201d said Dana Bryson. \u201cThe 2020 fires touched a lot of the same areas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Thankfully, the long-term recovery group from the last fires was still in place and they were able to reestablish disaster case management once again. Bryson said members of the long-term recovery group are also thankful that the recent fires didn\u2019t destroy any of the re-building done from earlier fires. As part of re-building standards, Bryson said fire buffer zones are typically added into the re-building process, which may have saved several homes this past wildfire season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were approximately 400 open cases for survivors in the immediate aftermath of the wildfires, but Bryson said that has been knocked down to approximately 100 open cases for support in the last several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The existing infrastructure of disaster response groups is what also helped secure a $100,000 grant from UMCOR for recovery efforts in the area. Bryson said that grant, along with disaster response contributions from the Pacific Northwest Conference, enable disaster case managers to begin working with survivors immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Greater Northwest Area Hispanic\/Latinx Ministries Coordinator Cruz Edwin Santos was able to get Hispanic volunteers into migrant communities to aid where other organizations perhaps struggled due to language barriers, forms and reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n UMCOR grants funded the initial case management work along with a volunteer coordinator. Re-building materials are also being purchased through these grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow we need the volunteers,\u201d Bryson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eight months after fires devastated communities across the Greater Northwest Area, there is still so much work to do to help communities recover and re-build. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":22036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,64,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greater-northwest-area","8":"category-news","9":"category-pacific-northwest-conference"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"Almeda](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/greaternw.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/alameda-fire-2.jpeg?resize=465%2C345&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/greaternw.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/wildfires-hispanic-community.jpg?resize=445%2C243&ssl=1\")