Mountain Ranch Ca Re-posted with permission from Terry Miner of the The Friends of Rail Road Flat School Butte Fire Relief Efforts a 501c3.

Via Facebook group Mountain Ranch Needs and Volunteers https://www.facebook.com/groups/518745204942169/permalink/546782125471810/

This is the #ButteFireReality Terry can be reached at –  terryrockzz@yahoo.com

Terry Miner

I’ve had a very busy couple of days and I want to share what I have learned and experienced. Picked up a girl out in the burn area living in a trailer on the property PG&E are busy cutting trees all around her. Brought to her to my house for some donations and girl talk and a couple hours of normal. (a toilet that flushes) She and the people in trailers around her, they don’t have anywhere to go to the bathroom. Holding tanks are full, septics aren’t functional and there are so many people cutting tree’s and working erosion control, she can’t even pee out side. They are needing those Wag Bag waste kits. It’s a degradable waste bag with agent, odor neutralizer and decay catalyst. You place the bag over the toilet and can use it in private. She says she makes one bag work for all day. Then met some people that came out to the RRF donation truck in Mt Ranch. People that are deep in, reached them via a kind hearted Hazmat crew lady that has been in contact with me. Where to start? They desperately need 5 gal propane, fuel, gas, electric heaters, compostable toilets, solar showers and food. I talked with a lady I have seen around and she told me she was ashamed to come out and ask for help at this point, that by now she should have been doing better. We cried together and hugged and ate some muffins and she thanked me for the few minutes of my time, a few minutes of normal. She said she would love a solar shower, can heat water but at present has no way to take a shower. She said people don’t talk to her now, or even look at her. Her clothes were dirty, the tears left streaks in the dirt on her face, her shoes blackened from the burned soil and mud she is surrounded by, she had to come out to get some heart worm medicine for her dog, the vet said they would give it to her but she didn’t have gas to get there. I was able to give her a gas card FORRFS had provided. A pack of new socks and a tube of Henry’s 208 wet patch sealer made a grown man cry. As I sit here exhausted (and sore to the point I can hardly walk today) with tears streaming down my face, I wonder when is it going to end??

**Reporter’s Note: This is only one such story we hear of daily either via the Facebook PM System because people are so lost and feel abandoned or are to afraid of the ridicule of the public. We hear these same stories through our Volunteers out in the field and from individuals who are working for the Agencies and Companies doing the actual clean up. This is as real as it gets.