It was like Armageddon
In 2020, DLX Inside Sales Manager Nick Hammond, his wife, Madison, and their two boys, aged 4 and 6, lived in Vida, Oregon. Vida sits on the McKenzie River, 30 miles east of Eugene, Oregon. Second homes dominated the community, but the family found an affordable house to rent, and set up making it a home.
Labor Day weekend that year had been exhausting. Nick and Madison were returning from a hunting trip in Eastern Oregon. Three days of backpacking in the heat of the Oregon summer, combined with the steadily rising smoke levels from the rampaging wildfires, had taken their toll. They were ready to be home and be reunited with the boys, who had stayed with Nick’s father. First, they had to make it over the McKenzie Highway Pass.
Nick: “So smoky, the whole drive…There was a big fire up on top of the pass. So it was like driving through Armageddon.”
That night, after they said their goodbyes to Nick’s dad, the family settled in to try to rest. They didn’t unpack from the trip. It was windy, which was common for the area. However, Nick would later recall that the wind was blowing in the opposite direction that night. Odd, but nothing to be alarmed at. The same was true of the sudden power outage at 9 pm.
Nick: “We lost power out there quite a bit. There were always storms because we’re just outside of town enough, and up in elevation enough, that if a bad storm came in, we’d get snow. When the power went out, we laid the boys down, and me and my wife were pretty tired (we’d been driving 10 hours), and we literally just laid down and fell asleep. And at 12:33 am, I get an alert on my phone that says, ‘Emergency: Evacuate, level three.’”
“And I’m in a daze because the power’s still out. I don’t know what’s going on. It woke me up, and it got me to go outside and take a look around. And when I went outside, there was about two to three inches of ash over everything. Our cars were covered in ash, the yard was covered, and the [McKenzie Highway] was too. There’s one way into town, one way out of town. It was nothing but non-stop traffic at 12:33 am, middle of the night. At that moment I realized: I think we need to go. And so I go back in and wake my wife up. I let her know about the alert. I took her outside. And then we started the process of getting ready to leave.”
Nick and Madison grabbed a laundry basket off the counter. They swept the clothes waiting to be put away back into it with one motion. Nick grabbed a handful of cash out of his safe. The only other items they had time to grab were their hunting packs still sitting by the door. Then they piled into their car with their two boys and two dogs and started to back out into the convoy of headlights clogging the midnight road. At the last minute, Nick asked Madison to follow in her own vehicle to save the second car. Nick remembers comforting his boys as firetrucks and police screamed down the empty, opposite lane toward the unseen blaze behind them.
It took them an hour and a half to make the thirty-minute drive to Nick’s gym in Springfield. They spend the night there, in the sleeping bags from their trip. At 5 am, gym members started to show up, so Nick woke up and went to work while his family slept in the back office.
The Gate
Nick: “So that was Monday night, Tuesday morning. So after sleeping at the gym, we went to a friend’s house because we were still under evacuation order. There was talk of the fire, of course. We talked about structures we had heard burned down; there were social media posts that said this burned, that burned.
“I happen to train a lot of firefighters, so at about 9:30 pm that night I got a text message from a buddy. He was a firefighter up there fighting it. I remember I was out on the street at my friend’s house, and he wanted me to call him and describe my gate. So I did, and then he texted me a photo, and it was a picture of my gate, and there was no house behind it.”
“He explained there was nothing left. They had been working on my house, keeping it wet, but I live near the Goodpasture Bridge. They called in all resources to save the bridge, and they were pulled off my house. And then I had to go over to my wife and, and you know, as I’m in a wreck from just hearing it, I had to hold it together and go explain to my wife that our house burned down and we had lost everything.”
Rebuilding
Nick has experienced a lot of trauma in his life. Early adversity has crystallized an attitude of perseverance and hard work. So this was no different. Nick went back to work Wednesday morning. He gave Madison room to grieve, but he processed his own grief by pushing forward with the normal rhythm of their lives.
His work as a personal trainer had given him a large community, both in person and on social media. As news of the family’s misfortune spread, friends and strangers offered a place to stay or personal loans. Madison’s foresight of investing in quality renter’s insurance gave them the financial means to buy the burned property from their original landlord. So in June of 2021, the family moved into a 200 sq ft camp trailer overlooking the ashes of their burned home, as they waited for FEMA to clear the property so they could hopefully rebuild.
Nick was fortunate. Over six years, through the kindness and support, both financial and emotional, of his community, and through offering work for trade wherever he could, Nick, Madison, and their now THREE children have built a new home where the old one stood. The new house, his flourishing personal trainer business, and his pursuit of a second career at DLX gave him the collateral to accomplish something years in the making.
Nick: “A year ago right now, I was able to go pay everybody back who lent me the money through four years of suffering to get my family into this house. And it was one of the best feelings that I probably ever felt because there were grown men who trusted me enough to lend me twenty thousand, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand dollars because of the life I live and what I’ve been able to do for people. And in one week, I was able to go pay every single person. And for the first time in like six years, I almost feel normal again. Like, I feel like I’m becoming me again because for the last six years, my life changed dramatically, and I had to do whatever I had to do to make sure my family had a home.
“I’m still training people to this day for trades that I did on this thing. All that work, all that suffering, put my family in a position that I would have never even imagined. I’m still working both these jobs, and I’m still exhausted, and I’m still tired. But my wife and my kids, we live in the most beautiful home that I could have ever imagined, that I built every square inch with my own hands. And we’re still building.
“I grew up in a really rough situation, and I raised a whole family before I met this second family. And now my grandkids and my kids get to have this, this thing, this home that all of us get to have a place to be a part of. From the sacrifices that I made. And it was all worth it.”
Prepared for whatever comes
It’s impossible to endure the trials Nick’s family experienced and not take steps to mitigate them in the future. Nick has cleared out any trees around the house. The new home has an ember-resistant metal roof installed instead of shingles. The siding integrates concrete to counter flammability. The family also keeps go bags with some basic necessities packed at all times, similar to the gear they had in the bags that night: a few snacks, sleeping bags, basic supplies.
The biggest step the family has taken is having a set plan and rally point in case of disaster. The looming threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event has prompted Nick and Madison to plan carefully with their 12- and 10-year-old boys and 3-year-old daughter.
Nick: “If the earthquake hits tomorrow, we all meet at my home. We have driven streets, walked them, and shown my children, ‘If you’re here, here’s how you get to here. Once you get to this main road, keep going and going and eventually you’ll get home. Everyone knows exactly how to get home.”
He laughs
“Which is also why I make my kids hike and run with me every single day, because we’re going to survive.”
