Burned-out Willow fire victims start long road to recovery

June 20--WILLOW -- Friday was the first day some of the 800 people displaced by the fire were officially allowed to go home as officials reduced the evacuation zone, with plans to remove it Saturday.

The fire destroyed 26 houses. Some people have no home to return to.

Justin High was putting a roof on his new house Sunday when he saw smoke billowing to the north. In December, High and his wife, Iditarod finisher Jaimee High, lost the home Justin had built on Serenity Drive. Jaimee narrowly escaped the fast-moving flames to rescue a few house dogs.

The Highs were rebuilding with a target date: late January 2016, when their first baby is due.

The Sockeye fire burned their new place to ash Sunday and scorched every tree on 4 acres.

Now the couple and their 24 dogs are starting over. Again.

High is building a temporary cabin while the couple stays at Martin Buser's Big Lake kennel. He doesn't mince words when people ask how it's going. Two homes destroyed by two fires in six months. No promise insurance will cover the rebuild.

High's answer is two unpublishable obscenities.

"I'm not going to sugar coat it any more," he said.

'Going to be a while'

Most of the 26 homes counted as losses are completely destroyed, said Beth Bennett, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross of Alaska. Ten of the homes burned belonged to mushers, including the Highs and DeeDee Jonrowe, according to the Willow Dog Mushers Association. Two of the homes reportedly belonged to Willow firefighters.

Now people are going back into the still-smoking fire zone to find out what's left. They may be left without as much as a shovel.

Recovering from such a disaster isn't easy, Bennett said.

"It's certainly going to be a while," she said. "I think a lot of the time that's where a lot of the frustration comes from."

With the fire still burning, much of the help victims may need is based not in Willow but 30 miles away in Wasilla. Once the fire allows, recovery assistance and donated items will be moved to Willow, disaster assistance agencies say.

As of Friday morning, 22 people had camped overnight in the parking lot of an emergency shelter at Houston Middle School but another 20 slept inside, some of them burned-out homeowners.

"They might be with us for a little while," Bennett said.

Smoky homecoming

People returning to their homes Friday discovered a mix of total devastation and unspoiled greenery waving in a rising south wind. Fire managers worried that Friday's wind shift could cause flare-ups and push the fire north again.

They warned returning homeowners not to worry about smoking hot spots, but to call 911 if structures were threatened or fires were torching and crowning in the trees.

Most of the homes in the opened evacuation area survived.

Adine Minturn, 53, was at an emergency shelter at Houston Middle School getting ready to load her belongings, two dogs, three children and two cats for the trip to her unscathed home on Long Lake. She was one of 22 people who spent Thursday night camped in the parking lot at the shelter.

The cats yowled inside the car.

Minturn said she's usually the provider in the family.

"Somebody actually fed me," she said. "Thank them all so much."

Flood after the fire

Amid the destruction, an outpouring of support is flowing to the people fighting the fire as well as its victims. Signs in Willow proclaim "Willow strong" and tell firefighters "Thank you" and "You Rock!!"

Donations for victims and firefighters are flooding Wasilla nonprofit MyHouse, the Red Cross donation drop-off point.

On Friday alone, volunteers and staff shrink-wrapped 13 pallets of water, mostly the accumulation of people bringing in three or four cases at a time, according to Jay Dagenhart, MyHouse outreach coordinator. Thirteen pickup loads and one box truck full of Gatorade went to firefighters.

"Everything from clothing, food, personal care items," Dagenhart said. "Dog food -- I can't tell you how many pounds. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000 to 10,000 pounds."

There have been concerns voiced that stockpiles of food, clothing and other donations are sitting unused in warehouses. Several people involved in handing out help say that's not true. If anything, they say, the giving is occasionally more than they can take.

The Willow Fire Department is getting lots of donated perishable food like pizza and chili that firefighters hand out to Alaska State Troopers or water-truck filling crews as often as possible, Chief Mahlon Greene said. "We invite them in to help us deplete our stock of donations."

Perishables the station can't use are going to the Willow food bank, Greene said.

"It's great everybody wants to help," he said.

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