07/26/2024
(Link is not working so the editorial is pasted below):
When a wildfire threatens your home, your livelihood and perhaps even your life, nothing is quite so disturbing as the possibility that you will be left alone.
In Baker County, you almost certainly won't suffer that fate.
The recent unprecedented rash of fires, including the Durkee Fire, the nation's largest, serves to remind Baker County residents and property owners how fortunate they are.
The county's cadre of volunteer firefighters have saved many homes and other structures.
They might well have saved lives.
The stories both frighten and inspire.
Residents who watched fires advance but who, once the flames had passed on, still had their homes.
Volunteer firefighters working almost literally around the clock, enduring triple-digit temperatures and lung-choking smoke.
People who have left their own homes, set aside their own jobs, to stand with their friends and neighbors in the most harrowing moments many will ever face.
The army amassed to fight the fires numbers in the thousands.
They come from many agencies and from at least 22 states.
Aircraft and helicopter pilots brave dangerous flying conditions to drop hundreds of thousands of gallons of retardant and water.
When the crisis has passed, most of them will return to their own homes.
But the volunteers will stay.
They will continue to meet at the rural fire district stations and rangeland fire protection associations scattered across a county that covers nearly 2 million acres.
They will continue to respond when smoke billows and flames crackle.
None of this is guaranteed, of course.
For many years these volunteer-run organizations have struggled to find replacements for those who, due to age, can no longer battle blazes. Many continue to do so even after what is for most of us retirement age.
Anyone capable of helping will be warmly welcomed by their local district or association.
Perhaps this experience will encourage some who have benefited from the selflessness that these departments epitomize will feel inspired to contribute in some capacity.
There could scarcely be a more appropriate response to a tragedy that might have been immeasurably worse if not for the volunteers' sacrifices.
When a wildfire threatens your home, your livelihood and perhaps even your life, nothing is quite so disturbing as the possibility that you will be left alone.
