As Western Wildfires Worsen, FEMA Is Denying Most People Who Ask For Help – By Sean McMinn (NPR) / July 1 2021
Brenda and Francis Dairy’s small ranch house, tucked into the Oregon woods, was built to withstand a wildfire. The siding was concrete, the roof metal. It didn’t matter. On Sept. 7 of last year, as the sky turned dark orange and the air grew thick with smoke, flames tore through nearby trees and engulfed the house entirely.
The Beachie Creek Fire destroyed the life that the Dairys had built for themselves in the small town of Gates. Brenda Dairy had spent her free time sewing quilts. Her husband, a disabled veteran, carved wood pens in his shop.
After the fire, they bounced between relatives’ houses for a while. But they needed a more stable place to live and a way to pay for it, so they went to the government agency set up to help: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Francis Dairy examines the damage on the property near the home he shared with his wife, Brenda Dairy, in Gates, Ore. The home was destroyed by the Beachie Creek Fire in 2020.
Krista Rossow for NPR
FEMA didn’t help them, Brenda Dairy says. Paperwork tripped them up. She said she provided copies of her husband’s Social Security card and other documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but FEMA said the documents didn’t match records in the agency’s database.
