Sandra Kaufman’s parents bought a condominium in the Golden Poles Chalet on Mount Hood more than 40 years ago, in 1967. She grew up skiing on the mountain, and the family condo served as home base for her ski bum years in her 20s, and then later for teaching her kids to ski. She was hoping the next generation would get the same opportunity, but it looks like a three-alarm fire that burned for days last week has damaged the Golden Poles beyond repair.
“It was really sad,” Kaufman said after surveying the damage. “I’m the kind of person where I usually get through the tough spots, and then I cry later. Now the crying is starting to happen, especially after seeing the reality.”
Ironically, the only thing left worth salvaging after the fire in Kaufman’s unit was the deck, with its barbecue and a firewood box. She and her family lost all of their ski gear, their big screen TV, some great books and old magazines and some irreplaceable mementos like the Tyrolean pull toys and flatware that remind her of good times from childhood.
It was the same for other Golden Poles owners. Almost none of their possessions survived, with the surprising exception of some of the cars parked in the underground garage. The concrete of the parking garage held up to the flames and people were able to simply drive their cars off once it was safe to enter.
“Everything we lost is totally replaceable,” Kaufman added. “The important thing is nobody got hurt. Nobody lost a life.”
Nothing resembling skis in the debris
The fire at the 30-unit chalet started at a little before 2 pm Monday, April 20, burned hard for days, and continued to smolder through the weekend. One 21-year-old woman, Ericka Lafever, was temporarily trapped inside with a broken leg, but her friends responded courageously to rescue her.
Jack Walker, another Golden Poles owner, reports that there is “really nothing to salvage in most of the units” of the Golden Poles. The Walker family owned unit #201, and by last Wednesday evening the roof of #301 had fallen down onto their floor. By Thursday morning their floor had crashed down to the floor of #101.
“Our storage unit on our deck had multiple pairs of skis and there was nothing that resembled skis in the pile of debris,” Walker wrote in a comment posted through Facebook. “My daughter’s bunk bed was hanging on the side of the building.”
Mary Jacob also found little if anything salvageable in her third-floor unit. She bought a place at the Golden Poles with her husband Larry in 2005 and they have lived there full-time since October of 2009.
“We lost everything,” Jacob said. “We do have some possessions in storage from when we moved from a bigger house in Vancouver. But here, we had all our treasures. All the family heirlooms, artwork, antiques, books, my mother’s and grandmother’s jewelry. Larry’s family had a violin that was like 300 years old. All the treasures were with us.”
‘Everybody did the best they could’
Mary Jacob has been skiing Mount Hood since she was four, and she taught skiing for 25 years. Her father Wade Cornwell served as one of the early presidents of Cascade Ski Club in Government Camp, and Jacob is quick to praise the local effort in Govy to fight the fire.
“Everybody did the best they could up here,” she said. “We’re rural, we’re not close to things, so we know that the response takes a while. But they got here en masse, and they did the best that they could to pile water on it. And they have worked long, long hours. We heard one guy say he had been working there 36 hours straight. Some of them were going home to get two or three hours of sleep and then coming back. They care about people up here. There wasn’t any way to put that out, with it burning the way it was.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, and several large questions remain unanswered now that the damage is complete. That article will be continuously updated as clues trickle in about the Golden Poles fire.
Anyone with information worth investigating is encouraged to contact Shred Hood with tips.
Last modified: April 28, 2015
