Oregon wildfire evacuees describe devastation from state's largest wildfire
Published Date: 9/10/2020
Source: The Oregonian
Hundreds of people displaced from wildfires in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains poured Wednesday into the Oregon State Fairgrounds as ash continued to fall from the sky, a grim harbinger of the devastation in one corner of rural Oregon decimated by ferocious wildfires that appear to have leveled entire communities. Shellshocked Oregonians watched and wondered helplessly what the next hours would bring. By the afternoon, Marion County leaders confirmed that two bodies had been discovered in a car along Oregon 22 — the main east-west road that many people had used to escape their burning towns along the Santiam River. The fairgrounds served as one of the main gathering points for people who fled the state’s largest current fires, Santiam and Lionshead, that tore through roughly 200,000 acres in the last 72 hours in Marion County. Read more about this story at The Oregonian/OregonLive: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/marion-county-leaders-praise-emergency-responders-say-will-be-miracle-if-no-deaths-tied-to-states-largest-blaze.html