Authorities say transient camp fire caused fire that burned more than 7 acres
By Buffy Pollock, Rogue Valley Times
Three years after most of his Phoenix neighborhood was destroyed in the Almeda Fire, Arana Road resident Wayne Morgan said a knock on his door at 4 a.m. Saturday immediately sent him back to Sept. 8, 2020.
A fire in the field behind Morgan’s home, between Houston Road and the Barnum subdivision along the railroad tracks, ignited near a transient camp and burned more than 7 acres.
After a 911 call by subdivision residents just after 3:48 a.m., Jackson County Fire District 5 responded to the dusty field and fought flames for nearly four hours with multiple engines, bulldozers and a heavy brush rig.
With the fire immediately growing to more than an acre, Fire District 5 called for additional resources from Oregon Department of Forestry, Ashland Fire & Rescue, and Medford Rural Fire, with the combined effort stopping forward progression just before 8 a.m.
Having police and neighbors knock on doors to alert residents of the fire was eerily familiar, Wayne said.
“I went straight out to the backyard, grabbed the hose and went through the fence,” the 66-year-old said Saturday.
Morgan said many of the neighbors in the subdivision, behind Debby’s Diner on South Pacific Highway, are still rebuilding their homes nearly three years after the Almeda Fire, which destroyed more than 2,600 homes.
The neighborhood was where a man intentionally set another fire while the Almeda Fire was already raging.
Michael Jarrod Bakkela was sentenced in May 2022 to 11 years in prison for setting fire to the area behind the subdivision, along the railroad tracks. Bakkela was arrested just a few doors down from Morgan’s home.
Coming up on the three-year anniversary of the Almeda Fire, a handful of empty lots still sit empty. On Saturday, the sound of nail guns and hammers persisted through hazy skies and sweltering triple-digit heat hours after the fire as Morgan stood on his porch, beneath a sign that reads “Risen from the Ashes.”
A retired carpenter, Morgan pointed out a broken gate and small path that leads to the county-owned former orchard land, overgrown with bushes and goat heads and dotted with smudge pots and debris from homeless camps.
“To say that we are fed up is an understatement. It’s really dry back here, and this problem is not going away,” Morgan said.
“I went to sleep Friday night, watching the (news of the) Hawaii fires. It’s just so sad what’s happening there. To wake up and go back and see fire and smoke behind my house, I couldn’t believe it. I already talked to five people who said, if it went up again, they wouldn’t rebuild.”
Jason John, battalion chief for the Medford Fire Department, was on scene Saturday morning checking for hot spots that could reignite. John said the cause of the fire had been confirmed as a transient camp fire.
John said Fire District 5 handled most of the firefighting and was on scene quickly, as was most of the neighborhood of Almeda survivors, dousing areas along the tracks with backyard hoses and watching from upstairs windows.
“The neighborhood was alive when I pulled in at 4:30 a.m.,” John said. “Everybody was up.”
John said calm, early-morning conditions prevented the fire from spreading faster.
“Almeda was a completely different animal, based on extremely high temperatures and extremely high winds,” he said.
“Thankfully, we didn’t have any of that. This came in before 4 a.m. Humidity was high and temperatures were low, which was really helpful.”
Quail Lane resident Jose Macias, whose property abuts the railroad tracks, got a knock on his door by Jackson County sheriff’s deputies around 4 a.m., moments after the initial 911 call.
“They said there was a fire behind the house and to just be ready if they had to evacuate everybody,” said Macias, who has owned his property for a decade and only recently moved back after rebuilding on his burned lot.
“I was kind of worried it would happen again. I could see the fire from the second floor, so I was watching, and they had everything under control really quick. That was a relief.”
Janet and Doug Dillemuth, who live on Arana Drive, were alerted to the fire before sheriff’s deputies knocked at their door.
“I heard crackling noise coming from an open window. I opened the shade and there was fire,” said Doug Dillemuth. “I got dressed and walked by the front door and there was a police officer. He said, ‘You might want to get a few things together in case you have to leave.’ I opened up access through our gate, in case they needed it and went out with a hose to wet down what I could.”
The couple said many fires have occurred in the field during the 35 years their family has lived in the neighborhood. Neighbors reported transient activity in the field last week.
“All the fires that have taken place in the time we’ve lived here have been human caused,” he said.
Janet Dillemuth said she planned to make an updated phone list to notify neighbors of suspicious activity or future fires.
“Maybe it’s time we all band together and figure out what to do,” she said. “It’s a very scary situation for us. This last fire was probably the worst fire we’ve ever had back there, except for the one where we lost our home three years ago. I don’t know if we need to go to the county and say, ‘Get with it,’ or what. I just know something has to change.”
Quall Lane neighbors Wesley and Jodi Joe agreed. The couple returned to their rebuilt home on Christmas Eve, after a two-year rebuild, and are still putting the final touches on their home.
Jodi Joe, who said her family regularly reports transient activity in the nearby field, said the knock on the door “brought back all the memories of Almeda.”
“We can’t continue to live like this. We can’t continue to live in a traumatic situation. It was just like before, all over again,” she said.
“They knocked on our door and told us to pack and to get ready to possibly be evacuated. This was the second time we’ve had that knock on the door. And the second time we didn’t get any emergency alerts. … I’m ready to fight back. I’m sick of this. When is enough, enough?”
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal. This story first appeared in the Rogue Valley Times.
