Local crisis response nonprofit provides aid amid Cow Valley Fire

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — As the Cow Valley Fire in Malheur County continues to burn through tens of thousands of acres as of Saturday afternoon, one local volunteer organization is working to aid emergency responders and affected community members in the area.

Founded in 2005, the Relief Angels is a nonprofit and crisis response network which provides aid to emergency crews, as well as relief efforts for people, pets and livestock affected by natural disasters, including wildfires.

Executive Director Valerie Odai told KOIN 6 News that their volunteers have been on the ground delivering care packages to crews fighting the Cow Valley Fire, with supplies including bottled water, snacks, Gatorade, moleskin, socks and gloves.

“We just try to support our first responders so that they can stay focused on their tasks and don’t run out of the things that they need to be able to do so efficiently,” she said.

Although the Relief Angels originally started in relief aid to first responders, Odai said they added to their mission when they found a gap that needed to be filled.

“As we got more involved with everything, we discovered that there was also a massive gap on the civilian side, where people being evacuated or actual survivors that were burned out, they weren’t receiving as much help as they needed or they would fall through the cracks because they wouldn’t qualify for whatever the reason may be,” she said. “And so we kind of stepped in just to fill the gaps and as we started doing that, we discovered the gaps were significantly larger than what we thought they were gonna be.”

While Odai acknowledged the organization will need to make a better risk needs assessment to find out where the gaps are in the case of the Cow Valley Fire, she emphasized how Relief Angels tries to focus on individual needs that aren’t being met by the major organizations.

For instance, she said the Red Cross will set up a shelter for immediate relief for people, but not necessarily focus on animals or livestock, which are oftentimes the ones that need the most help in a rural community.

“There’s people that have 30 goats that have never been trailered in their life. Corralling goats is not an easy thing,” Odai added. “It is when you have the right equipment. It is when you have the right dogs that have the right training. If you have the right resources, it’s a fast, easy process. But if you don’t, which most people don’t, it’s not as simple. So it’s those kind of elements that we go in for and we have people that have been doing this their entire lives.”

Odai also noted that, when the Cow Valley Fire first sparked Thursday afternoon, she was afraid the community and emergency response would be limited and poorly-planned, as with others she’d seen in recent years, such as Canyon Creek in 2015 and various others in 2020.

“I was utterly petrified,” she said. “I was watching a repeat of that exact setup because all of those fires had this similar scenario of perfect conditions for a fire to explode.”

But when the response shifted within the first 24 hours, with Governor Tina Kotek establishing the emergency conflagration declaration on Friday , Odai called this a “game changer,” which saved dozens of homes and other small towns, including Vale.

“If you look at it right now, the heat signature as we speak is headed straight for Vale,” she added. “If they didn’t already have those teams there and already have the aerial resources that they need, Vale would have been gone by today. Almost guaranteed.”

Should any people be permanently impacted due to their homes burning in the fire, the next step would likely involve the Relief Angels setting up donation drop-off points in neighboring towns, loading up and transporting all the goods themselves to get them directly into the hands of the community.

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