Deep in the densely forested foothills of southern Oregon, near the town of Butte Falls, Lanette and Steve Martin lived with their son and his family until last year, when a wildfire chased them away from their home. As embers the size of charcoal briquettes landed on their front deck, the retired couple and their family jumped into their cars, leaving behind five chickens and a cat. “If we’d waited another 10 minutes, we would have been engulfed in flames,” Steve Martin said.
That same day, Sept. 8, 2020, an urban fire fueled by hot, dry weather and strong winds tore through the nearby towns of Talent and Phoenix, in the Rogue Valley. Alma Alvarez, a migrant worker, was working about 15 miles away when the fire began raging toward Phoenix, where her two younger children, aged 10 and 13, were home alone. Alvarez rushed back to find the neighborhood already in flames. The family escaped with the kids’ birth certificates and their cat, but everything else was gone. That nig