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Posted on 09/21/2020 10:34:43 AM PDT by Twotone
MOLALLA, Ore. (Reuters) - Nicole West steered her bulldozer through the smoldering forest, pushing logs into the underbrush and away from the wildfires ripping through Oregon's Cascade Mountains. Her border collie, Oink, rode shotgun as West and a volunteer crew raced to clear a fire line.
Behind West, on the front lines of the 136,000-acre (55,000-hectare) Riverside fire, two young men pulled a water tank behind their pickup truck, struggling to douse the flames.
These are the men and women of the "Hillbilly Brigade" - about 1,200 in all who came together this past week to fight the state’s biggest fire in a century. They are credited with saving the mountain hamlet of Molalla, an hour’s drive south of Portland, after its 9,000 residents were forced to evacuate.
In a year when ferocious wildfires have killed at least 34 people and burned millions of acres in Oregon, Washington and California, the brigade has pulled off a miracle in the thick forests around Molalla in recent days, residents and fire officials say.
They organized and deployed themselves with little or no help from a small and overwhelmed local fire department - which focused on protecting the town center - or from state and federal agencies that were deployed elsewhere.
"We were left on our own to stop this," said West, a 36-year-old ranch hand, as she briefly paused her dozer late Wednesday afternoon. "There wasn't anybody coming from the state to save us. So we had to save ourselves."
Mike Penunuri, fire marshal for the Molalla fire district, which has just 13 firefighters and 33 volunteers, called the massive ad-hoc effort “amazing.” Penunuri's crews spent the past week hosing down flames that lapped at the town’s edge and battling back fires around farm houses.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.
These, these are my people
Dog’s name is Oink.
I’m stealing that idea.
I'm surprised she didn't condemn them for taking matters into their own hands.
RSG(Sanders Wood Products) in Molalla lost their Hem/fir log deck and some yard equipment during this fire. They were very lucky the whole sawmill did not burn to the ground.
Ok, Hillbilly Brigade. All a f’n joke and hee haw to ya, right Brooks?
Brooks, you haven’t figured out your commie Pussy Brigade will gut you like a hog. But laugh it up.
The enviro police will come along to fine them once the media spotlight is off these men and women.
Kinda like the Cajun Navy.
These are the REAL Oregonians!
That’s a good one. I have a cow-dog named “moo.”
hillbilly hero bump.
What the media, government and big city know-it-all’s don’t understand is that this self-reliance, teamwork and initiative is more the rule than the exception in flyover country.
I’m surprised they haven’t been arrested?!
The governor needs to realize that some Oregonians want to put out fires instead of setting them, and respond accordingly.
I gotta read more carefully.....I would have sworn the title read “Hillary Brigade” and was going to demand the title be labelled with a “barf alert”!
“Kinda like the Cajun Navy.”
I live outside of Mobile. Went to town the other day and there were boats, travel trailers, and utility trailers staged in the parking lot of a vacant strip mall. Pretty sure they were at least part of the Cajun Navy. Those guys are something else. Apparently they use their own time, money, and equipment to perform rescues in relatively dangerous and definitely uncomfortable environments. Real heroes.
Be still, my beating heart.
NOT GUILTY!
It is so hot there, and then there’s the fire too.
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