SEPTEMBER 17, 202012:18 PM | UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

How a 'Hillbilly Brigade' saved an Oregon town from raging wildfires

By Brad Brooks
7 MIN READ



Nicole West, part of the Hillbilly Brigade of some 1,200 men and women who spontaneously came together to fight fires, stands for a portrait petting her dog Oink on a bulldozer during the aftermath of the Riverside Fire near Molalla, Oregon, U.S., September 16, 2020. Picture taken September 16, 2020. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton


MOLALLA, Ore. (Reuters) - Nicole West steered her bulldozer through the smoldering forest, pushing logs into the underbrush and away from the wildfires ripping through Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Her border collie, Oink, rode shotgun as West and a volunteer crew raced to clear a fireline.

Behind West, on the front lines of the 136,000-acre Riverside fire, two young men pulled a water tank behind their pickup truck, struggling to douse the flames.

These are the men and women of the "Hillbilly Brigade" - about 1,200 in all who came together this past week to fight the state’s biggest fire in a century. They are credited with saving the mountain hamlet of Molalla, an hour’s drive south of Portland, after its 9,000 residents were forced to evacuate.

In a year when ferocious wildfires have killed at least 21 people and burned millions of acres in Oregon, Washington and California, the brigade has pulled off a miracle in the thick forests around Molalla in recent days, residents and fire officials say. They organized and deployed themselves with little or no help from a small and overwhelmed local fire department - which focused on protecting the town center - or from state and federal agencies who were deployed elsewhere.

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