By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press
SELMA, Ore.- Matt and Kristy McMahan fell in love with rural southwestern Oregon while driving through the area five years ago. They finally moved last December, buying a home with 10 acres of forest.
On Saturday, all that remained of that house after a wildfire was its brick shell, with ashes and twisted metal heaped in the basement.
“I truly believe everything happens for a reason, but it’s really hard to figure out what this reason will be,” Kristy McMahan said Saturday. “It was like Sherwood Forest. That’s what we bought it for. Now it looks like Mars. I never expected fire to take my house.”
The fire started Thursday and destroyed four homes, including the McMahans’ residence. A fifth home burned Friday.
More than 100 scattered homes were threatened at one point, but none remained in danger, authorities said. By Saturday, firefighters had lines dug around the entire perimeter of the blaze, but they considered the fire only 40 percent contained.
The fire has burned more than 1,600 acres, said Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Chris Friend. The cause remains under investigation.
Residents of about 40 homes who had been evacuated since Thursday were allowed back to their homes Saturday afternoon.
“This was my front door,” Mrs. McMahan said, peering in the empty frame. “That was the kids’ room. That was the mattress from their bunk bed.”
“This was my kitchen,” she said looking in a back window, the aluminum frame and glass melted in globs on the brick sill.
McMahan was swimming with her kids in a nearby river when some feeling told her to go home. When she got there, fire was bearing down on her house. She managed to get three horses out of the burning corral and into a trailer, round up four dogs and three burned cats, turn loose her neighbor’s horse, and call her husband at the tire store in Grants Pass where he works.
“We had maybe 15 minutes. It was a do-or-die situation.”
In Northern California, firefighters on Saturday continued to battle a fast-moving fire that burned 2,300 acres, injured two people, destroyed 30 structures and forced residents to evacuate.
More than 500 firefighters were battling the blaze, which started Friday. A firefighter and an inmate helping to extinguish the blaze suffered minor injuries.