Rude Awakening

At 7:00 o'clock am, while we were sound asleep, there was a heavy, urgent rapping at our door. I hurriedly put a robe on, and called for Jim to get up. When I opened the door, there was a sheriff's deputy to tell me that we were under Level 3 evacuation. I said, "What does that mean?!" He told me we had about an hour to gather our essentials and get out. I said, "What about the horses?!" Since we provide a refuge for rescued horses, we don't take them anywhere so no need for a trailer. There was no time to make arrangements to have them picked up, or walk them out safely. He said, "I don't know what to tell you."

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Scramble

Jim and I quickly dressed while figuring out priorities - what to pack, what to do about the animals, how to make our escape, what should we bring? Everything was a top priority, all at once! I had an overnight bag pre-packed with essentials, but I had no plan on anything "necessities" beyond that. We went outside to work on the animals - the smoke was already affecting us. I put hay outside for the horses, filled their water trough, and closed the barn so they couldn't go inside; tied my phone number in their manes in case they escaped the property. I tried calling around for someone to pick up our horses; since they are rescues, we don't take them anywhere, so no need for a horse trailer. I couldn't get through to anyone - it didn't matter anyway; anyone close enough to help us would've been busy evacuating others already. Besides, by the time anyone would've been able to come up to us, they wouldn't have been allowed up our road - the sheriff was closing it.

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Jim tried to find Milo, but the smoke was so choking he couldn't call out for the cat very long. Once we did what we could for the animals, we tried to think what we should grab from the house. Or at least I did - Jim was ready to go, NOW. I was not as eager, as this had been *my* home for 27 years; this was my life. I looked at many things I could have brought: a large tote full of decades of photos that I was planning on rearranging into new albums; my daughters' urn and casket of bones; heirloom jewelry; precious boxes of letters and journals; in the end, I was simply overwhelmed with a kind of feeling of "Sophie's Choice" - how could I leave anything behind? So I said "goodbye for now," and left it all. 

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As far as our escape vehicles, I suggested that Jim drive his truck, and I would take the van. He was resolutely against that plan. Jim is generally a very compliant person. Whenever I ask him for his preference, he drives me *crazy* by saying, "Whatever you want." He has yet to understand that what I want is to know what ~he~ wants! So on the rare occasion that he does have a strong opinion, I not only listen to it, I (usually) default to it. When he stated, "No - we're taking one vehicle. Under no circumstances do we separate," I agreed without hesitation. 

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Abandoning Our Home

This tore me up - even as I type this, I'm crying. Leaving everything, especially the horses, ripped at my soul. I put on a front as I always do, of a can-do attitude "We can handle this, let's focus on what we do next, where we need to go." On the inside I was screaming, "This can't be happening! I need to stay at home!" But you do what you have to do, reason must override emotional attachment. We had seen that the church near us was a refuge center. However, when we arrived, the last family was leaving it - the church was now in the evacuation zone. So we moved on to the next refuge, Chinook Winds Casino. ​

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The Return!

On the way to the casino, I realized I didn't have my wallet - of all the necessities, I needed my identification and cards, if nothing else! We pulled into the Neotsu post office to turn around and go back home. At the entrance to Highland Estates Road, a different sheriff's deputy stopped us. "You can't go up there," she adamantly stated - almost angrily. I explained the situation, and she firmly said, "Alright, but just grab your wallet and NOTHING MORE, understand?!" I promised … even so, when we got to the house, I grabbed a few folders out of the filing cabinet as well - documents such as titles and certificates that would have been difficult if not impossible to replace. 

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Just before we abandoned our home for the second time, I spray painted "3 HORSES" on the driveway asphalt, so that any firefighters or other rescue personnel would know that animals needed help. As we drove off the property and turned left onto Highland Road, I saw billowing smoke across the street, coming up the hill. Jim didn't tell me till much, much later (or perhaps I blocked the information), that from his vantage as a passenger, he actually saw flames.

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Evacuation, Resumed

The casino turned us away because we had a dog! Really?! In an emergency situation?! Despite my chagrin, it proved later to be to our benefit. Since we couldn't stay there, there was only one place left for us to hang out - my Mom's apartment in Newport. So we hit the road with what amounted to the equivalent of heavy summertime traffic: It only took us about an hour. The people who left after us took hours to make the same trip - even five times as long! In part because the casino itself was eventually evacuated.

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We stayed in my mother's two-bedroom apartment for six days.

It would've been relatively comfortable, if she'd kept the twin beds she'd had in the spare room, but she got rid of them about a month before we arrived. So I slept on the couch in the living room, and Jim slept in a recliner in the spare room. Little did we know that it would be nearly 16 months before we'd sleep in our own home again. 

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See Recovery page for chronicle highlighting our progress and struggles during and after that period.

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