Two men are arrested for looting homes left empty after 500,000 evacuated Oregon wildfires

Two men have been charged by Oregon authorities with looting properties that were evacuated by owners fleeing the deadly wildfires that have so far forced half-a-million people from their homes, killed at least 31 people in three states, and left dozens more missing.

Anthony Travis Bodda, 21, and Alexander Justin Jones, 36, were arrested on Thursday after they allegedly led law enforcement officials on a high-speed chase in fire-ravaged Santiam Canyon, Oregon, authorities said.

‘I am disappointed that while in a state of emergency these people would victimize members of our community,’ Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast said.

‘The women and men of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office are committed to holding people accountable if they chose to victimize residents from our evacuated areas.’

Sheriff’s deputies said they were responding to a report of a suspicious van near the city of Detroit, Oregon, just east of Salem.

Deputies spotted the van driving at a high rate of speed near the Gates region.

The two men are then alleged to have fled police on a highway and then drove through a nearby golf course.

Deputies managed to set up spike strips which punctured the tires and neutralized the van.

The two men then got out of the van and made a run for it, according to sheriff’s deputies.

One of the men was immediately arrested on the golf course while the other was seen going into a goat shed near the area.

A K9 unit managed to locate the other suspect, who was also taken into custody.

The two men were taken to Marion County Jail and were charged with attempted theft, burglary, reckless driving, interfering with a peace officer, criminal mischief, and reckless endangerment.

The death toll from the fires in California, Oregon and Washington stood at 31 and was expected to rise sharply. Most of the fatalities were in California and Oregon.

In Oregon alone, more than 40,000 people have been evacuated and about 500,000 are in different levels of evacuation zones, Governor Kate Brown said on Saturday.

Fires along Oregon’s Cascade Range grew Saturday, but at a slower rate than earlier in the week, when strong easterly winds acted like a bellows, pushing two large fires – the Beachie Creek Fire and the Riverside Fire – toward each other and the state’s major population centers, including Portland’s southeastern suburbs.

Fire managers did get a spot of good news: Higher humidity slowed the flames considerably.

In California, a total of 28 active major fires have burned 4,375 square miles, and 16,000 firefighters are trying to suppress the flames, Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant said.

Large wildfires continued to burn in northeastern Washington State too.

Those who still had homes were not safe in them. A half-million Oregonians were under evacuation warnings or orders to leave.

With air contamination levels at historic highs, people stuffed towels under door jambs to keep smoke out. Some even wore N95 masks in their own homes.

Some communities resembled the bombed-out cities of Europe after World War II, with buildings reduced to charred rubble piled atop blackened earth.

Residents either managed to flee as the flames closed in, or perished.

Millicent Catarancuic’s body was found near a car on her 5-acre property in Berry Creek, California. The flames came so quickly she did not have time to get out.

On Tuesday, she packed several of her dogs and cats in the car but later called her daughter to say she decided to stay. Firefighters had made progress battling the blaze.

The wind was calm. The flames still seemed far away. Then they rushed onto the property.

‘I feel like, maybe when they passed, they had an army of cats and dogs with her to help her through it,’ said her daughter, Holly Catarancuic.

In all, 22 people have died in California since wildfires began breaking out across the state in mid-August.

President Donald Trump will visit California on Monday for a briefing on the West Coast fires, the White House announced.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the governors of California, Oregon and Washington state – all Democrats – have said the fires are a consequence of global warming.

‘We absolutely must act now to avoid a future defined by an unending barrage of tragedies like the one American families are enduring across the West today,’ Biden said.

The same smoke that painted California skies orange also helped crews corral the state’s deadliest blaze of the year by blocking the sun, reducing temperatures and raising humidity, officials said.

Smoke created cooler conditions in Oregon too, but it was also blamed for making the dirtiest air in at least 35 years in some places.

The air quality index reading Saturday morning in Salem, the state capital, was 512.

The scale normally goes from zero to 500.

‘Above 500 is literally off the charts,’ said Laura Gleim, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Because past air quality was rarely so poor, the government’s yardstick for measuring it capped out at 500, Gleim said.

The department started monitoring in 1985.

The weather conditions that led up to the fires and fed the flames were likely a once-in-a-generation event, said Greg Jones, a professor and research climatologist at Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon.

A large high-pressure area stretching from the desert Southwest to Alaska brought strong winds from the east toward the West Coast, reducing relative humidity to as low as 8 per cent and bringing desert-like conditions, even to the coast, Jones said.

Instead of the offshore flows that the Pacific Northwest normally enjoys, the strong easterly winds pushed fires down the western slopes of the Cascade Range.

It isn’t clear if global warming caused the conditions, Jones said, but a warmer world can increase the likelihood of extreme events and contribute to their severity.

The smoke in Portland filled the air with an acrid metallic scent like dull pennies.

It was so thick that Ashley Kreitzer could not see the road when she headed out to work as a ride-hailing driver.

‘I couldn’t even see five feet ahead of me,’ she said.

‘I was panicking, I didn’t even know if I wanted to go out.’

George Coble had no home to return to. He came with some of his employees Saturday to a wasteland of charred tree trunks just outside Mill City, Oregon.

Coble lost everything: his fence-and-post business, five houses in a family compound and vintage cars, including a 1967 Mustang.

The family – three generations that lived in the compound – evacuated with seven people, three horses, five dogs and a cat.

‘We’ll just keep working and keep your head up and thank God everybody got out,’ Coble said.

‘There are other people that lost their family. Just be thankful for what you did get out with.’

Erik Tucker spent the day hauling buckets of water through what remained of his neighborhood to douse hot spots smoldering in tree trunks five days after the wildfire tore through the area.

Tucker, who lives in Lyons, Oregon, had expected the worst but found his family’s home still standing while homes just down the street were gone.

He was coated in ash and smudged with charcoal.

‘No power, debris everywhere, smoke, can’t breathe,’ he said.