Recovery is slow for families affected by Carpenter Road fire in 2015

FRUITLAND, Wash. – A year after fire raced over the land – the heat bursting an underground water tank, fusing metal and melting glass – the weeds came back with a vengeance.

Lorne and Amber Brunson stood amid the burned-out remains of their farm, surveying 20 acres of charred trees. The garden, where they grew most of their food, was choked with weeds.

“I’m surprised there is anything edible here,” Amber Brunson said, reaching down and picking a long stalk of asparagus.

During one devastating August weekend, the Brunsons lost nearly everything they had worked for in their 10 years in Fruitland.

“I couldn’t go up there awhile,” Amber Brunson said of their property. “I thought more trees would be alive.”

Now, 10 months later, the Brunsons are struggling to rebuild, wary of what the coming fire season will bring.

“This is just going to happen more and more,” Amber Brunson said. “It’s just getting hotter and hotter.”

Fruitland area could take five years to recover

The Brunsons’ home was destroyed in the Carpenter Road fire, which burned 100 square miles in Stevens County. The blaze was not the worst during the state’s most destructive wildfire season on record. However, for residents like the Brunsons, the effects were no less devastating than larger fires in Chelan or Twisp. Five homes burned and one man died.

But “not enough homes burned out here for us to get help,” Amber Brunson said.

Brunson’s claim isn’t quite accurate, said Jessica Martin, a disaster relief case manager with the Okanogan County Long Term Recovery Group. Instead, she said, it’s more of an issue of communication.

“There may be gaps in the communication of which services are available,” she said. “Honestly, we try to be a catalyst of the communication.”

Martin helps connect people like the Brunsons with people or programs that can help. The organization was formed after large fires burned in Okanogan County in 2014 and was intended to last for only a year. However, she said, the need for continued support was evident and the organization has continued.

Communities struck by disasters, such as wildfire, go through stages of recovery, Martin said. For each day of disaster, it takes seven days of relief (housing, shelter, food, clothing and basic needs). And for each day a community is in relief, it takes seven days of long-term recovery such as stabilizing the economy and dealing with residual trauma.

By Martin’s estimation, the Fruitland-Hunters area will fully recover in about five years.

Martin said that when a disaster first starts, help such as food supplies and volunteers pour in. Once the flames die, attention and support turn elsewhere.

That leaves property owners struggling, she said.

Help came slower than anticipated

Martin’s organization connects landowners with state resources and occasionally advocates for fire victims at the state level. In doing that work, it has a powerful advantage: It’s local.

Many residents of rural Stevens County are wary of government, said Dean Hellie, administrator of the Stevens County Conservation District.

“There are a large percentage of Stevens County who are not looking for a handout,” Hellie said. “They’re not going to work with the government.”

Hellie said his group’s focus is helping to protect ecosystems. So, for example, the district can pay for landowners to replant trees and repair fences. The landowners have to buy trees or repair materials in that case, but would be reimbursed for 75 percent of the cost by the conservation district, Hellie said.

“It’s not to help an individual property rebuild and regain their financial losses, it’s to help the environment and speed up the recovery,” Hellie said.

Between 190 and 220 private landowners were affected by the Carpenter Road fire. Many of those landowners haven’t contacted the conservation district.

The district received about $230,000 from the state to assist with wildfire recovery, Hellie said. However, the money wasn’t disbursed until the spring. That caused problems, he said, because it meant the hillsides weren’t logged and seeded quickly enough, which may lead to mudslides down the road.

“Everyone I’ve worked with is grateful that they’ve had a little bit of help,” Hellie said. “Even though it wasn’t near enough or soon enough.”

While the fire delivered economic hardship, Martin said, wildfires also caused emotional and physical pain.

“Honestly, we do see that health is definitely affected by disaster,” she said.

Looters and trespassers

Since the fire, Amber Brunson said she’s had trouble processing the devastation. She had planted many of the trees on the couple’s 20 acres and had a special connection with them. The Brunsons spent the winter living in a rented farmhouse about 20 minutes from their property.

When they return to their property, “We’re going to be living on a barren piece of land,” Lorne Brunson said.

One day in early April, Amber Brunson picked through the scorched earth looking for morel mushrooms to dry and use throughout the winter in soups, stews and stir-frys. The mushrooms thrive after wildfires and she said the activity was therapeutic, giving her time alone in the woods.

But even that meditative practice wasn’t free from fire-related trouble. Since the fires forced several landowners, including the Brunsons, off their property, looters and scavengers have descended on the remote plots. As mushroom season went into full swing, enterprising harvesters swarmed over the burned land.

Amber Brunson said she’d headed to one of her favorite spots early in the morning, only to find it had been picked clean already.

Rose and Leah Lehrbas are the Brunsons’ nearest neighbors and own hundreds of acres. In August, Larry Lehrbas, Rose’s husband and Leah’s father, died of heart failure while trying to evacuate their home. Now their land sits empty. Rose lives in Spokane and Leah lives in Hunters.

On a Saturday in April, the Lehrbases visited their property only to find it overrun with mushroom hunters, trespassing on their land. They got into a yelling match, and ultimately Leah and Rose Lehrbas were chased off their own property.

“We don’t need this kind of crap,” the younger Lehrbas said. “We’ve had enough of people being disrespectful.”

While driving to his property, Lorne Brunson came across a truck parked on the Lehrbas property. Two women were picking mushrooms. Normally an even-keeled man, he snapped and screamed at them to leave.

The two women picked their way down the hill. One apologized, which calmed him but didn’t diminish his anger. He shrugged his shoulders, relaxing slightly as the women drove off.

“I don’t know, what do you do?” he said, turning away from the burned hillside. “The other day there were rigs parked all up in here. It’s been a tough year for everybody out here, and it’s one more thing we don’t need to deal with.”

Slow emotional recovery

Lorne and Amber Brunson moved to Fruitland about 10 years ago from California with their daughter, Riley. Lorne was a general contractor in California, where he had two stress-induced heart attacks.

The three make about $15,000 a year, mostly from beekeeping. Over 10 years, they slowly built their home. For the first six years, they lived without electricity.

“Fifteen-thousand dollars is totally survivable,” Lorne Brunson said. “But now we have to rebuild all of a sudden.”

The couple hope to build a metal shop with an apartment in the back on their property. It’ll cost roughly $30,000 though. They have $8,000 in savings from a GoFundMe campaign started for them after they lost their home, plus whatever they will make from their bees this year.

Over the course of the spring, the Brunsons slowly began piecing together the various services available.

Martin said the Brunsons’ struggles are typical of a community post-wildfire.

“I don’t cry as much when I talk about it,” said Amber Brunson. “I thought it would be a little quicker process emotionally.”