Nearly two years after the fire, the work continues. As late as January 2023, modular homes are still being delivered in Otis. Can we call this a success? It depends on how we measure. By the end of the summer of 2022, somewhere between 130 and 140 families had returned to put new homes on their properties. Some were built from the ground up. Most were modular homes or trailers. For some, it’s the nicest home they ever lived in. For nearly all of them it is the only thing it needs to be: home. I spoke to someone just last week who had only been home for a few days. Every night, she said, she went out onto her deck. She’d forgotten what the stars looked like without city lights. She’d forgotten what it meant to have a deck.

Well more than 100 families have found new homes away from Otis. Some bought new homes. Most relocated to apartments and other similar housing. Even before the fire it was difficult to find affordable housing in Lincoln County, and after it was nearly impossible. That most fire survivors were able to remain in north Lincoln County is remarkable. Dozens of others, however, have moved to other parts of the county, other parts of the state, other parts of the country. Some did it because they had to, others because they wanted to. They needed a new start.

Carol was one of those that did it because she had to. Her inability to make decisions ultimately resulted in Carol having to return to the life she had tried so hard to get away from. The last time I spoke to her, she was living in a friend’s attic. She said she hoped to only be there for a few days.

Out at The Grange, their relationship with CRT continues. They continue to expand their services to fire survivors as well as ensuring their old programs continue. Building on EMFR’s $15,000 donation to the county, they hope that soon the mental health outreach worker from CORE can be a permanent position. Still using the office as a private space to talk to survivors, she continues to build a clientele of people for whom she is still the only person some Otis residents will talk to. When she doesn’t have an appointment, she’s out on the floor folding clothes and sorting donations. She’s heard a lot of stories there, too.

Landscaping with Love continues to thrive as well, with the support of The Grange, CRT, and a lot of volunteers. Beyond the obvious replanting of Otis, they’ve also hosted a Spiritual and Emotional Recovery event funded by the LTRG. They also get occasional visits from the Otis Strong Tigers, a group of fire-impacted students and school district staff brought together after the fire. They volunteer at both The Grange and the Greenhouse from time to time. Whether tending the plants outside or folding clothes inside, they’re just among the dozens of people still giving of their time to fire survivors in Otis.

The Grange itself is in better shape in every sense of the word. They remain a center for fire survivor relief, and still don’t know when their mission of providing material goods to fire survivors will end. There are still nearly a dozen of them who come in every day for help. Indeed with mental health outreach, a food bank, internet access, and other services that just about any Otis resident needs, they are again what they started as more than a century ago: a center of community life.

Not every bond in Otis has improved with time. When the Volunteer Clean-up finally packed up their things with the arrival of state clean-up crews, some relationships went with them. Some of the original leaders of the effort have drifted apart. No longer tightly bound by the day’s mission of cleaning up one more home, finding the funds to keep going for one more week, cultural and political differences once again define their relationships. But certainly not for everyone. The transgender activist and the evangelical minister have dinner together when they can and talk about their lives and their beliefs. The Black leader from the Portland metro area is now both a member and a leader of The Grange.In terms of environmental justice, the fire survivors of Otis ultimately got a bit more, though like the blistering heat of 2022, it’s not the typical application of the concept. The LTRG and CRT purchased two-dozen air conditioners, and got them into the homes of people who desperately needed them. The irony is remarkable.

In August of 2022, the Latino Outreach portion of EMFR became a new group, one entirely separate from the group that contributed little more than making a phone call. Called Conexión Phoénix, they are what Fernando and his team always dreamed was possible, a community group serving the Latino community of north Lincoln County. One that makes sure its people are prepared for whatever disaster life throws at them.

Two of our stories don’t end so neatly or happily.

When Wendy left the fire survivor hotel, one of her friends said to me she thought Wendy would be dead in a week. She was off by two days. Returning to both the location and the life she was fleeing as she headed home the day of the fire, she overdosed on the couch one night. Her father, Tommy is still living at the transition motel, struggling to find a home. Like Wendy, I fear the problems that came with Tommy from Otis will someday kill him.

Betty died on Aug. 9, 2021. We held a memorial service with nearly two dozen people. When we were done, we walked to the beach and dropped the flowers in the receding tide. Betty had died living in a hotel alone just like she said she would.

Betty and Wendy died. Tommy and Carol have an uncertain future at best. From these four stories, it’s tempting to wonder if everything we did, everything EMFR worked for was a failure? I certainly feel that way at times – but I do not think so. The four stories that concluded above are tragedies, and they speak to how social problems are sometimes nearly impossible to escape.

For despite everything we could not do, EMFR ultimately did what it set out to do – and now we’re out of business. This is as it is supposed to be. We were never meant to be an organization that lasted forever. Indeed, in the beginning we only had one mission: give donors a local place to give their money. In the end, however, what was begun by one man even as the fires still burned, ultimately became a government-recognized nonprofit that would attract funding from other nonprofits, and even government support via state contracts. It made small things possible, too:

Indeed, when I wrote the last check from the fund in August of 2022, I may not have known what people that money had gone to, but I knew what it had paid for. First, was a handicapped accessible ramp on someone’s home so their family could come visit. Second was a new trailer for a survivor who had been living in a hotel for nearly two years, one he placed next to his brother’s house. Two more families were brought together because the people of Otis did it together.

All of us are #OTISSTRONG!

11.5.1 Key Concepts

Describe how disaster recovery is a social problem, using qualitative and quantitative data from the Echo Mountain Fire (CO1)

Disaster recovery is a social problem because it makes all the existing social problems in a community worse because people lose access to safe housing, healthy food and clean water, and essential relationships in their community. The Echo Mountain Fire devastated a community experiencing high rates of poverty, homelessness, and harmful drug use. However, when we read survivors’ stories and explore the related demographic data, we learn that the truth of people’s lives cannot be reduced to general categories. Instead, each survivor is uniquely #OTISSTRONG.

Distinguish the causes and consequences of overlapping social problems using the experiences of Echo Mountain Fire Survivors (CO2)

Before the Echo Mountain Fire, many people in the community experienced all of the social problems explored in this book – educational inequality, high rates of homelessness, racism and poor health, among other examples. Because of their physical location, they experienced less access to quality food, health, mental health, and drug treatment services. When we experienced the dual disasters of wildfire and the COVID-19 pandemic, the underlying social disconnection made recovery much harder to achieve. Even now, over two years later, some families are still waiting for a home.

Explain how natural disasters can expose, amplify, or reduce structural inequality. (CO3, CO4)

Natural disasters, including the Echo Mountan Fire, expose existing social inequalities because people with less power and privilege have fewer personal resources to survive disaster and to support their own recovery. They may also find it more challenging to meet the complex and contradictory requirements to receive governmental recovery support. Often, the existing inequality gets worse, because the destruction of existing infrastructure impacts the people with the fewest resources the most. In some cases, structural inequality may decrease. For example, many of the new homes now in Otis are newer and better than the structures they replaced.

Assess whether the idea that celebrating diversity can create a resilient rather than polarized community is applicable to resolving other social problems. (CO2, CO6)

In the initial recovery efforts in Otis, the individuals and organizations involved celebrated their diverse social locations. Individuals were People of Color and White, queer and straight, evangelical and atheist, transgender and cis. The line between survivors and helpers was fluid because survivors stepped up to help each other. Although the lines of conflict still exist, people who do this work in Otis say to the extent our efforts were successful, it was because we celebrated our diversity, rather than minimizing it.

Evaluate the effectiveness of the interdependent recovery efforts in successfully supporting survivors to recover physically, financially, mentally, and spiritually. (CO5, CO6)

Recovery in Otis is a long-term effort. It continues to require individuals to act with social agency. New community agencies collaborate with county, state, and federal programs to provide support. Fire survivors continue to navigate complex bureaucracies to advocate for what they need. Recovery continues to require all of us.

11.5.3 Discussion Questions

• As you read the stories of the survivors of the Otis wildfires, where do you see overlapping social problems?
• As you explore all the ways in which people, communities and agencies responded to the wildfires and their aftermath, where do you see individual agency and collective action?
• Cars mean different things in American society. They may mean independence for a teenager, a possibility of safety for a person fleeing a disaster, or a major cause of climate change. How can cars help us explore the causes, consequences and inequalities of social problems?