A Desperate Bid for Survival as Fire Closed In on an Oregon Mountain Town

Then a call came in: Fire was coming over the mountain.

As the Beachie Creek Fire clambered up canyons and sprinted across ridgelines, another huge wildfire farther east, the Lionshead Fire,

began pressing toward the Highway 22 canyon.

The authorities decided: They had to evacuate the towns. Now.

After midnight, Don Tesdal, a volunteer firefighter, strapped his four children into his Suburban and drove through his Detroit neighborhood yelling: “Everybody wake up! Fire! Fire!” Bedroom lights winked on between the trees. Neighbors in their underwear started pounding on doors.

At around 4:30 a.m., Cindy and Larry Neblett of Pinckney, Mich., were sleeping in their R.V. outside Detroit when they were jolted awake by thumping on the side of the vehicle.

“You have to evacuate immediately … fires all around you … you have to leave now!” the person shouted.

The couple was in the Northwest for their first major R.V. road trip since Mr. Neblett retired six years ago. They had spent time exploring the territory around Portland and were headed south to see places like Crater Lake and the Redwoods when they settled for the night in the Detroit area.

The first waves of evacuees managed to navigate the two-lane highway as their cars were pelted with burning branches and pine cone fireballs. They crawled under tilting tree trunks and climbed out of their cars to try to push fallen trees out of their way.

By the time Mr. Sheppard, the former firefighter, left the open field in Detroit where he had spent the night, plumes of flame were rocketing hundreds of feet into the air. He and a friend caravanned west toward Salem before boulders and trees closed their path. He prayed: Don’t pop a tire.