After the smoke clears, light

By Gretchen Ammerman

Oregon Coast TODAY

For the past decade, organizations from local to state level have been busy ensuring that safeguards are in place to prepare for a tsunami at the Oregon Coast.

Drive through a coast neighborhood, and you will often see blue lines painted on the asphalt, delineating a tsunami safety zone where you are, hopefully, crossing into an area high enough to avoid a rogue surge triggered by a distant earthquake.

Add to that the seasonal flood dangers posed by heavy rains nearly every year, and it’s no wonder that when coast residents Phil and Rachel Robertson were roused from sleep this September by the beginnings of what would soon become the Echo Mountain Complex fire, they at first struggled to comprehend the cause.

“We got awakened in the middle of the night by a lot of honking, but since it was Labor Day weekend we thought it was just people partying until a neighbor knocked on the door to tell us about the fires. But I was like ‘This is the Oregon Coast, we don’t have forest fires.’”

Phil and Rachel evacuated to the nearby site of the former Otis Cafe, but didn’t grab much on their way out of the house.

“I just really didn’t take it seriously,” Phil said. “We grabbed the dog and just a few other things. We ended up down at Roads End at two o’clock in the morning, because the Otis Cafe area got evacuated too, then we went to my moms and dad’s house.”

After a few hours of rest and breakfast with the family at their home on Holmes Road in Lincoln City, Phil and Rachel headed back home.

“We went to sleep in our own house that night thinking the danger had passed, then we got a call from my brother Peter who said ‘I need help,’” Phil said. “That was when I knew it was serious.”

Peter Robertson, a former firefighter, was doing everything he could to help save properties from the fire, even calling into service equipment from his current business, Northwest Septic Service.

“Peter has a pump truck,” Phil said. “So, he went to Devils Lake and pumped thousands of gallons of water to help save homes and barns in that area.”

Heeding the second level of evacuation orders and this time taking it more seriously, Phil learned that even the family home on Holmes Road had been evacuated, so he and Rachel headed north to a safe place where they could wait for news.

“We watched all the Facebook videos from where we were staying in Seattle until we saw one that actually showed our house,” Phil said. “It was fully engulfed in flames.”

The disaster took everything they left behind — except, Phil found as he sifted through the wreckage, a hand-made Christmas tree.

“It was a gift from my grandmother on my dad's side,” Phil said “It was a ceramic thing she’d made in the ’70s when it was all the rage to make things like that.”

Now staying with Phil’s parents, whose home was thankfully saved from the fires, the couple are embracing the holiday, even pitching in to increase the already impressive display his father, Roger Robertson, puts up every year.

“We’re very blessed and thankful that we had somewhere to go,” Phil said. “Because so many don’t.”

• On April 9, the Chessman Gallery will open “From the Ashes,” an exhibit of objects retrieved from or altered by the Echo Mountain blaze, as well artwork inspired by the fires.

For consideration, contact Gallery Director Krista Eddy at 541-992-4292 or artgallery@lincolncity-culturalcenter.org.