Wildfires
Blue Mountain Eagle
Friends save home
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Wednesday, August 19, 2015
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ASSAULT FIRE BY AIR AND GROUND
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
Sam Palmer, of Sene-
ca, who lost three houses
in the Canyon Creek Com-
plex, helped to save his best
friend¶s home.
The deck of Tad Houpt¶s
home, a half-mile up the can-
yon near Canyon City, had
caught on ¿re.
Palmer and a friend headed
up to Houpt¶s home.
“We used buckets at ¿rst
then got a generator going and
used a garden hose to pump
water out of a pond,´ Palmer
said. “We were in the mid-
dle of it — there was a lot of
wind, heat, ash and ¿re.´
He said at one point it felt
the winds were blowing near-
ly 100 mph.
We kept at it until we got
it,´ Palmer said.
Meanwhile, Houpt, who
has a broken leg, had headed
away from the ¿re.
He tried to Àag his friend
down when he passed them,
then turned around when they
didn¶t stop.
“I got to the bridge (to my
house), and there was no way
Tammy Clark captured this shot of a fire retardant
drop Sunday afternoon, Aug. 16. As weather
conditions allow, crews put on a massive attack to
the Canyon Creek Complex fire by air, with water and
retardant drops, as well as by ground throughout the
weekend, Aug. 14-16. Officials report 26 residences
and over 100 structures have been destroyed. Nearly
575 crews are working the fire, which as of Tuesday,
Aug. 18, is over 43,000 acres.
Contributed photo/Yao Hui Huang
Tad Houpt, left, and Sam Palmer have been business partners and best friends
for a long time. Last week, Palmer helped save Houpt’s home from the Canyon
Creek Complex fire.
to get across,´ Houpt said.
He says he¶s glad they
saved his house, “but I¶m re-
ally glad that they made it.´
“Sam¶s been my best
friend since we were 3 or 4
years old,´ he said. “As much
as the house is worth, nothing
is better than that.´
‘We’re rising from the ashes’
Jason Wright’s family owns only the clothes on their backs
By Nancy McCarthy
Blue Mountain Eagle
JOHN DAY — Jason
Wright piled socks, under-
wear, jeans and shirts in a
shopping cart in the Pavilion
building at the county fair-
grounds Monday. The cloth-
ing — all donated — signaled
the start of a new life.
Wright and his family were
in Pendleton when ¿re en-
gulfed the Sheep Creek home
they had rented for six years.
“We got a call at 11:30
Friday from a neighbor and
he told me, ‘Your house is
on ¿re, and there¶s no rea-
son to come back,¶ ´ Wright
said.
“, didn¶t get my pictures of
my daughter. I lost my pick-
up and four-wheeler. The only
thing we had was the clothes
on our backs,´ Wright said.
His wife, Aimee Wright,
and daughter, Carle, are stay-
ing in a ¿fth-wheeler offered
to them by a local friend.
He described the experi-
ence in one word: “traumat-
ic.´
Yet, Wright, who has lived
here since he was 2 years old,
has nothing but praise for the
community.
“I have to brag on the
people around here,´ Wright
said. “The way people are
coming together is unbeliev-
able. It¶s making me so happy
to see what the community
can do while going through so
many changes.´
Only one of Wright¶s
neighbors¶ homes was saved,
he said.
“God must have been
watching her house. It¶s
still
standing,´
added
Wright, who thanked the
¿re¿ghters.
He looked over the clothes
in his shopping cart and
sighed.
“We¶re rising from the
ashes, literally.´
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY – While
Bryan Nelson credited Mike
Mannell for saving his house,
Mike Mannell, in turn, praised
another friend for saving
Mannell¶s life.
“At 11 a.m., we were at a
/evel 3 evacuation,´ Mannell
said. “I hadn¶t been noti¿ed
or listening to the radio. I had
laid down for a nap at 10 a.m.´
At 11 a.m. a friend of mine
from Mt. Vernon, Jeff Comp-
ton, a former U.S. Army
ranger who spent three years
in IraT, came up to check on
me.´
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
The Eagle Nancy McCarthy
Jason Wright collects donated clothing from the
Pavilion. Fire destroyed the house that he and his
family rented for six years.
Nelson calls his
friend a ‘hero’
By Nancy McCarthy
Blue Mountain Eagle
Contributed photo/Bryan Nelson
Although a portion of Bryan Nelson’s property was
scorched, the fire didn’t reach his house, barn and
outbuildings. Nelson credits neighbor Mike Mannell
for saving the structures.
away; the house was empty.
“He turned the sprinklers on,
he grabbed his guns,´ and he
Àed, Nelson said.
Mike Mannell’s
friend woke
him up as fire
approached
He woke me up and told
me the ¿re was behind my
property up on the ridge, head-
ing my way,´ he said. “Had he
not come by and woke me up,
I probably would have per-
ished in the ¿re that day.´
My wife Ginny was
at work that day,´ he
said.
“Jeff came back an hour
later — I gathered all my guns
out of the cabin — at the ¿-
nal minute, I ran through the
smoke to save my Harley Da-
vidson and parked it at Bry-
an Nelson¶s house next door
under a sprinkler, and put a
sprinkler on his house.´
As a Vietnam veteran,
U.S. Marines, Mannell said he
feels, “the brotherhood is alive
and well — that¶s the truth.´
He added, “I want to give
my friend Jeff Compton credit
for saving my life — he¶s my
brother.´
Berry Creek Ranch
home saved
Neighbor saves one house but loses his own
Bryan Nelson gets tears in
his eyes when he thinks about
his neighbor¶s loss.
He calls Mike Mannell a
“hero.´
“He was building his house
— a two-story cabin on Canyon
Creek — for six years. It was
his retirement dream home,´
Nelson said. When the Can-
yon Creek Complex ¿re hit the
canyon, Nelson, who owns a
house that he rents to tenants,
was away. But Mannell was
there.
“That day of the ¿re, he said
the wind came up and there was
a wall of ¿re coming right down
the canyon,´ Nelson said.
Mannell ran to turn the sprin-
klers on at Nelson¶s house. The
latest tenant had just moved
One vet saves
another¶s life
Mannell¶s nearly completed
house, which he had built him-
self, burned to the ground. Nel-
son¶s house survived.
“He saved my house,´ Nel-
son said, pausing a bit to catch
his composure. “I¶m sure it
helped. He had kept it mowed
down all around it, and it was
green.´
Although the ¿re approached
the house, nothing burned, not
even the outbuildings.
“Everything was saved,´
Nelson said.
In addition to his house,
Mannell¶s two antiTue cars, the
camper he stayed in, a chicken
house, two tractors and a horse
trailer were destroyed. His hors-
es survived.
Mannell is going to stay at
Nelson¶s rental house for now,
Nelson said.
Nelson displayed some
photos he shot in the ¿re¶s af-
termath. His barn and house
are in the shot, with a patch of
scorched earth in the forefront.
Nelson shook his head at what
could have been, had it not been
for Mannell.
“He¶s a hero,´ Nelson said.
CANYON CITY — Gor-
don and Julie /arson¶s home
in the canyon at their Berry
Creek Ranch was saved, but
they lost three barns to the
Aug. 1 ¿re.
“I¶m so sorry for every-
one who lost their homes,´
Larson said.
He¶s a retired Oregon
State Police lieutenant and
had worked as OSP sergeant
in John Day for several
years.
His wife, Julie, works at
John Day City Hall.
He recalled a young ¿re-
¿ghter who had to be packed
out of the area. A medical
helicopter Àew him out.
“I know those ¿re¿ghters
worked their tails off un-
til midnight to get that out
— the wind came through
there,´ he said.
Airman loses home to ¿re
‘There are no
words,’ said
James Dunn
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY — James
Dunn, an active-duty airman,
was coming home from Mich-
igan, where he is stationed,
when he heard about the Can-
yon Creek Complex ¿re.
On Thursday, Highway 26
was closed at Ontario, so he
stayed the night there.
He came home Friday, but
the ¿rst time he was able to see
the Canyon City home where
his wife, Judy, lives, was last
Sunday. It was destroyed.
“There¶s no words to de-
scribe the devastation,´ he
said. “The past 30 years, they
haven¶t logged or cleared, and
won¶t let us gra]e cattle — it
worked all those previous
years.´
O FFICIALS POST INFORMATION
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Julie Reynolds:
‘It sounded like a
jet engine’
By Angel Carpenter
Blue Mountain Eagle
On Aug. 14, Julie and
Dennis Reynolds heard
through the grapevine that
their home, beyond J-L, had
been destroyed in the Canyon
Creek Complex ¿re.
The rumor, however,
wasn¶t true.
“We were very fortu-
nate,´ Julie said. “We have
neighbors who did lose their
home.´
The day of the ¿re, they
had little time to get out.
“We could see it coming
up over the hills — it sound-
ed like a jet engine,´ she said.
They left their cat, Harry,
behind.
“We all joined hands in
prayer and just prayed for the
home and safety for others,´
she said, adding they left at
about 1 p.m.
When they returned to the
property, they saw the ¿re
had stopped at the paved road
in front of their home and at
Canyon Creek in the back
yard.
“I couldn¶t believe it,´ she
said.
They called out to their
cat who was hiding in some
bushes, safe.
Shoppers check the Canyon Creek Complex fire
information board set up by Forest Service officials
at Chester’s Thriftway in John Day. U.S. Forest
Service officials have posted an information board
on the Canyon Creek Complex fire at Chester’s
Thriftway in John Day. More information boards are
planned for Mt. Vernon and Prairie City.