Matt Manson stared at the burned-out corpse of his pick-up truck on Friday, which sat on a blackened driveway in front of a smoldering pile of rubble that once was his house.
Like other residents of the small agricultural town of Phoenix, Oregon, he was in shock as he returned to his neighborhood and saw how fast the Alameda Drive wildfire had engulfed his home and upended his life.
Manson, who now owns only a backpack with a change of clothes, struggled to find the words to describe how the fire had ravaged the town that sits near the green Siskiyou Mountains, about 210 miles south of Portland. Trees lining his street were now just blackened, skeletal remains.A half million people in Oregon were ordered to evacuate as of Friday as scores of wildfires ate up the parched countryside, smoke darkening skies across the state, along with neighboring California and Washington.
Doris Peterson, 85, said she only had time to grab Toby, her 12-year-old Chihuahua, when she and her husband, Richard, fled after police banged on their door Tuesday about noon and told them they had just minutes to get out. On Friday she and her husband sat in their car at a baseball field just north of Phoenix, waiting to be escorted into their neighborhood by police. She was bracing for the worst, but still hoped for a miracle.
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