“It’s heartbreaking,” said Sandra Casso, homeowner at Bear Creek Mobile Home Park in Ashland.
Decades of memories lost in a matter of minutes.
A once unimaginable reality for Casso, after the fast moving Almeda Fire left little behind in its path on Tuesday morning.
“When I had my first daughter many, many years ago, I bought a little tiny baby dress in a secondhand shop and I had that. It’s the only thing of their childhood that I kept. Ninety nine cents, but it had memories,” said Casso.
Casso says she and other neighbors fled on foot after emergency responders shut down the main road.
“I didn’t bring any clothes, any makeup, any tooth paste, nothing. A friend loaned me this T-shirt. We have no clothes, nothing,” said Casso.
Other homeowners like Nick Weaver were miles away when the fire broke out.
He tried to race back to save his cats, but it was too late.
“Surreal, you know. Now I feel empathy for those Paradise, California folks, a couple years back,” said Weaver.
A day later, the two returned to pick up the pieces finding their tight knit community lost to flames.
“You can’t see it now, but this was a real beautiful place we took care of each other like family,” said Weaver.
Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler says at least one person is dead.
He said a lot of people declined to leave their homes on Tuesday and he doesn’t know if the people who refused survived.
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