Neighbors of the Barnum subdivision, destroyed in 2020 by the Almeda Fire, turned out on Sunday to clean debris and trash from a 31-acre field they say poses fire danger to nearby houses.

Displaced once by the Almeda Fire, then rattled by an out-of-control transient campfire this past summer, residents of a subdivision inhabited by mostly Almeda survivors took matters into their own hands over the weekend.

Two-dozen residents of the Barnum subdivision, between Houston Road and Highway 99 near Debby’s Diner, donned work boots and yard tools to trek into an overgrown field along the railroad tracks on Sunday.

A handful of neighbors provided pickup trucks and trailers. Jackson County officials provided liability waivers and an industrial dumpster to allow cleanup of the 31-acre parcel, twice burned by fire in recent years.

The neighborhood was leveled during the September 2020 Almeda Fire, which destroyed more than 2,500 homes and burned 3,200 acres between Ashland and Phoenix. With most of their homes rebuilt by mid-summer, neighbors were re-traumatized Aug. 12 when they awoke to Jackson County sheriff’s deputies knocking on their doors to alert them to a 7-acre fire in the nearby field.

Following the August fire, neighbors attended a Jackson County Board of Commissioners meeting to voice concerns. County Administrator Danny Jordan said cleanup efforts were limited during fire season due to the potential for equipment to start a fire. The property is county-owned, Jordan explained, due to lack of access that would have allowed future development.

“It isn’t a property the county wanted to acquire or likes to have. It came to the county through foreclosure. Someone just let it go because they didn’t have access,” Jordan said at the time.

Sitting in a secluded space between rural Phoenix and Highway 99, the field is often used by homeless campers. Nearly all those who showed up Sunday to help clean trash and debris from the field lost their homes in 2020. A secondary fire during Almeda, set by a transient, made the transient-caused fire in August even more upsetting.

Patti Ruiz, a longtime resident and one of three cleanup coordinators, said she was unsure how much of the neighborhood would turn out to help. Neighbors met for pizza in recent weeks, she said, resolving to “do what they could.”

“Let’s face it. You don’t have to ask for permission to clean up a bunch of junk. So, we just said, ‘We are going to just do it. This affects us, it affects our kids, our pets. Something has to be done,” Ruiz said Sunday while pushing a wheelbarrow.

“We just set a date and said, ‘Let’s git-r-done. I don’t think we’ll ever get all of it, but we had to make an attempt. … We wanted to get it cleaned up as best we could and then let (county crews) take it and run with it this spring.”

Ruiz said organizers hung posters on mailboxes and contacted the county to give officials a heads-up about the planned cleanup. All told, at least six truckloads of trash, debris and crushed smudge pots were cleared from the former pear orchard site.

Subdivision resident Ed Chizek said neighbors figured — at the very least — they were improving visibility of the parcel.

“We figured we’d clean up the big stuff to make it easier for the county to keep it mowed down… and so it’s easy to see the homeless people camping out there,” he said.

Subdivision resident Rick Sanders, helping Chizek unload crushed smudge pots into the dumpster, said he hoped cleanup efforts would enable heavy equipment to access the field and create wider pathways, allowing better visibility for neighbors to keep an eye on things.

“Keep it burned down or mowed down, brush cut it or whatever,” Sanders said.

“Just keep there from being another fire,” he added.

Lauri Miller waded through crushed blackberries, behind one of the pickup trucks, plucking a crumbled lid from a Styrofoam cooler out of the dirt. Miller recently moved to the neighborhood but lived in another part of Phoenix impacted by the Almeda Fire.

“I think it’s great so many of the neighbors came out to help,” she said.

Ryan DeSautel, facilities director for Jackson County, applauded the neighbor’s willingness to step in and find solutions.

“It was great to see the neighborhood volunteering their time to help clean up the field and improve the safety of their community,” DeSautel said. “They’re a great group of people.”

Ruiz said helpers on Sunday stayed an hour longer than scheduled, and that neighbors were committed to reducing fire danger for the neighborhood.

“We all lost our homes in the Almeda Fire. We just finished rebuilding. Now we pay way higher taxes and, with the fire that just happened, it was just a reminder that we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Ruiz.

“The county and the city still have to do their part, but this is just one more step toward helping them get back on track,” she added. “Just like we all have been trying to get back on track the past three years.”

Ruiz continued, “I think, as a community, what we want is to say is, ‘OK, this was unusual. For there to be another fire. But we’re going to be proactive and we’re going to help take this first step to make things better.’ Now it’ll be up to them.”