This story is part of KLCC's coverage of the five-year anniversary of Oregon's historic Labor Day wildfires.
The days leading up to the Labor Day holiday weekend were happy ones for Carole Coduti.
The longtime McKenzie River resident had turned 70 and was feeling good about it. She was creating her wearable Rhinestones and Rust inspired art from found and recycled items, and showing her pieces in big galleries. Her husband, Dennis, had officially retired after a long career as a respected building contractor on the river. They loved living in their log cabin home on the river, where they’d been since 1979.
Coduti had no idea that everything was about to change.
On Sept. 7, 2020, at around 4 p.m., the wind started blowing from the east, funneling hot, dry blasts of air down the McKenzie River Valley.
“It was so fierce. I've never seen anything like it before," Coduti said. "And then it just progressed from that. The power went out. Then we had dinner by candlelight."
It was so dark that Coduti remembers deciding not to wash the dishes. Instead, she just headed to bed.
“And, it was so smoky, I didn't have the windows open,” Coduti said. “So, I couldn't hear. I guess the cops and fire people were going up and down the road telling people to get out. And I didn't hear them!”
Neither Carole nor Dennis had their cell phones charged that night, she said.
“In the morning around 7:00 a.m., I could hear our dog crying by the back door," she said. "So, I let him out, went out with him and...what I saw...there was fire all around us. I woke up my husband and said we need to leave now. I put a pair of pants on and a bra. We were going to take his truck and my car and he started beeping his horn deciding we should probably go together, which probably was a good thing.”
They didn't take anything. Except their dog, Quinn.
The terror continued when they turned left from their driveway onto the dark highway.
“The road was just full of these rocks on fire. If I hadn't had a 4-Runner, I wouldn't have made it over them,” she said. “And, there was a big rock—if I had swerved to miss it—I would have been in the river.”
So, Coduti opted to hit the rock and it popped her tire. Then, she could only drive 10 miles an hour down the highway.
“Watching our friends' homes on fire. It was so sad," she said. “But you know, shock is really a good thing. It gets you moving. You don’t think about grandma’s tea set. You just get the hell out.”
Coduti believes she and Dennis were likely the last residents to evacuate the river valley. As she white-knuckled her way toward Vida on a tire rim, she saw no one else on the road.
A pink glow in the rearview mirror was a terrifying reminder that the fire was close behind. At Leaburg Lake, police helped change the tire and sent them off with these directions: "Drive! Don’t stop until you get to Springfield!"
“When we got to town, there were tons of people there that had already gotten there at 12:00 midnight,” Coduti remembered. “And you know, it's like: What do you do? What do you do?”
Shock, fear, anger, sadness
Kelly Shaw completely understands. She’s a Licensed Professional Counselor for PeaceHealth who works at McKenzie River Community School in Blue River. She grew up on the river and in the wee hours of Labor Day 2020, she helped her elderly mom and aunt evacuate. Shaw described the immediate emotional response as shock.
“It's the brain's way of helping you survive,” she said. “You go into that survivor brain and that's the part that allows your body to move so you can escape danger. I describe it as a lizard brain.”
After initial shock, Shaw explained, other emotions can set in after a disaster. “Anxiety, some fear, some anger, sadness, numbness, feeling overwhelmed,” she said.
Shaw, herself, experienced a lot of those feelings.
“I remember going to Red Cross and the FEMA things that were set up and trying to be an adult and pay attention and know what they're saying, and then walking out the door and being like: 'Okay, what am I supposed to do?'"
She said it was like her brain couldn't hold information, which—in hindsight—is understandable, she said. It's a typical way that people respond to trauma.
Compounding stress and trauma
Carole and Dennis Coduti spent two months in a motel in Eugene. She said she felt constant stress contending with people going through the dumpsters day and night, and even a meth lab that was set up in a room nearby.
And the trauma kept mounting.
“We had to have our dog put to sleep two days after we got to the motel,” she said. “The mighty Quinn. He saved our life. If he hadn’t cried at the back door—we’d be toast.”
Carole and Dennis heard rumors that their house had burned to the ground. But it was nearly two weeks until they were able to travel back up Highway 126 to confirm it with their own eyes.
They cautiously made their way through a mangled, smoldering hellscape. With all landmarks destroyed, it was hard to find the driveway they’d used for 45 years. When they did, it led to a foundation where their home once stood.
“Once I got there, I saw everything gone," she said. "Of course, you try to look for things to see if there's anything left. I saw the fireplace still standing. The toilets even melted. That's how hot the fire was.”
Coduti lost her artwork, vintage clothing, wedding pictures, baby clothes, family heirlooms: objects that told the story of her life.
In the months and years since, she’s experienced serious emotional distress about the loss of those items. She said, sitting amidst the rubble, it felt like her identity was sifted into the ash.
“You work your whole life to build, you know, a life and then in one night it's gone. Like that. Everybody goes, ‘Oh, it's just stuff." And I go, ‘But it was my stuff. And I loved it.’”
Of course, while Coduti’s pain is personal—she is not alone in her grief. Estimates of the number of homes destroyed in the fire vary, but most sources say more than 500 residences were affected up and down the valley.
As both fire survivor and behavioral health counselor, Kelly Shaw acknowledges that after the fire, the line between professional and personal was thin.
“To be with clients and to hear their story and hold space for them, but then also, to actually cry with them,” she said. “Under normal circumstances in a therapy session, it's very rare have I ever cried with a client, but how could I not in that time that followed?”
To this day, the smell of smoke in the air can trigger panic attacks and extreme anxiety for some fire survivors, Shaw said. And there are families whose homes still haven’t been rebuilt and who must work through the daily stressors of living together for years in a camper trailer.
Still, right alongside grief and loss, Shaw said that since the start, there’s been an outpouring of kindness and generosity from within and beyond the McKenzie River community.
While Shaw had numerous adult clients before and after the fire, today she works primarily with kids. She estimates more than 50 McKenzie School students lost their homes. Between living through the COVID-19 pandemic and surviving the Holiday Farm Fire, Shaw said there’s been a lot for kids to unpack, emotionally.
“I think it's crucial to provide space for kids to process and to play and to have a place for their stress, their worries, their anxiety to be,” she said. “Identify the accurate emotion, help them process that and then develop skills that they can use in the classroom and at home so that they can process through their stress. So it doesn't become a full-on anxiety disorder, right?”
When asked if she finds importance in acknowledging this five-year anniversary of the fire, Shaw said everyone has their own feelings about the traumatic event that occurred here.
“I don't necessarily feel compelled to bring up the five-year marker. That could have to do with my own personal beliefs—just about grief, you know? I mean, what is time? We're all at different places. We went through an event together and yet it's still so individual and personal," she said. "So, I don't know what five years might mean to somebody else.”
Sitting on the deck of the new house her husband helped build on the spot where their beloved log cabin once stood, Carole Coduti said for her, time has flown. She still experiences feelings of sadness, anger and even guilt. But she also feels gratitude. She said talking about her feelings with close friends helps.
“There was a time when I just wanted to die. I wished I had died in the fire," she said. "But I don't wish that anymore. So, it's a good thing.”
In late 2021, Coduti contributed to the script for a documentary play about the Holiday Farm Fire performed at the Wildish Theater in Springfield. With the mighty McKenzie River babbling behind her—she reads an ode to the home she lost.
“I can hear my sweet cabin weeping as she burned to the ground- trying so hard to lower her roof gently on top of 70 years of memories and beautiful things she loved. She was dressed in rhinestones and rust, vintage velvet lace, bark cloth drapes, and love letters my dad had written to my mom.”
