Almeda Fire – Rising from the ashes, Part 2

A podcast by Michelle Coradetti and Alan Harper

To begin episode two, you will hear the experience of Chris Chambers as he drives down Highway 99 in the thick of the fire.

Chris Chambers “Driving down 99 will probably one of my most vivid memories of the fire and just everything is burning on multiple, both sides of 99 between Ashland and through Talent. Businesses are burning thick, thick black smoke is just going across the road and you know, trying to drive through it. Am I going to hit somebody? What’s on the other side of this. Is there a fire engine stopped in the road? Am I’m going to run into him? I’m trying to honk and luckily, nothing bad happened. But just watching all these structures burning like, oh my gosh. Wow, and finally, get to talent and into the neighborhood there and there’s an entire apartment complex of dozens and dozens of units, burning right next to the place I was trying to get to. Trying to figure out if it was there or not. It was there, but the siding was actually melting off of it. It was so hot. There’s our firefighters from Ashland are getting a hydrant. And trying to do all they can to save it and we’ve got District Five there already and there’s you know, houses are burning already. It was like, wow, this is, this is bad.

If Chris thought, everything looked bad guy tower, describes it as even worse.

“It looks like the whole Valley from Ashland to Phoenix and almost into Medford was just engulfed in flames. You could just see the glow going that whole distance. And then of course the sound of those propane, canisters and Transformers and whatever. Just it just sounded like a war zone.”