Keeping up with the Jones: The wildfires of 2020

A wildfire blazes in the distance as seen from Rogue Valley Country Club, Medford, Ore. (Photo: Craig Hilty)

In mid-September, I called my old friend Dave Phipps, longtime superintendent and now GCSAA Northwest field staff representative, to see how things were in Oregon. Wildfires have ravaged much of the West, burning millions of acres, thousands of homes and killing numerous people.

Dave and his family were safe in his home in Oregon City, Ore. He was just about to leave his house when I called him. He was heading to Home Depot to buy more air filters for his house. He showed me what his filter looked like. It was just a week old, but it looked like it had a year’s worth of wear on it. For a few days in September, Oregon had the worst air quality of any place on earth.

Smoke clouds are visible from Meadow Club in Fairfax, Calif. (Photo: Sean Tully)

“I’m sick of 2020. What else can this year throw at us?” Dave asked. It’s hard to say, but the wildfires aren’t the only current natural disaster. As of press time, Tropical Storm Sally is battering Alabama and Florida, and there are seven “areas of interest” in the Atlantic that are threatening to become major hurricanes.

As our team started compiling interviews with superintendents in Oregon and California, we realized we needed to give these poignant stories the space they deserved in the magazine. The following are first person accounts of the wildfires from superintendents in the region.

Read their first-person accounts here.