Kathy Gryder-Davlin sat in the smoke-choked dark, disoriented and fighting panic, struggling even to breathe, when she felt fingers brush against her arm.

She didn’t know who had come into her room as the house burned.

But she grasped the hand.

It belonged to her daughter-in-law, Felicia Hull.

The two escaped through the back door as flames spread rapidly from the front of the home at 2820 D St. in Baker City.

It was a little after 2 a.m. on Friday, July 28.

By dawn the one-story, two-bedroom home was a charred husk.

But Kathy, 55, was alive.

And for that she credits her daughter-in-law.

“She saved my life,” Kathy said, her voice broken by sobs, as she sat in her wheelchair in a motel room on Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 2, five days after the fire.

“I was so disoriented. I almost didn’t make it out. If it wasn’t for Felicia, I wouldn’t have.”

The blaze, which Baker City Fire Chief Todd Jaynes said was sparked by an electrical problem in the attic of the 93-year-old house, left six people without a home.

Kathy and her partner, Dan Davlin, 58, had lived in the rental home for nine years along with Felicia, 33, and her husband, Ryan, 34, who is Kathy’s son.

Ryan and Felicia’s children, Katie, 10, and Landon, 8, also lived there.

The children weren’t home when the fire started. They were visiting Felicia’s parents in Portland.

But although Katie and Landon were spared the terrifying moments when cloying smoke filled the 1,080-square-foot home, they, along with their parents and grandparents, lost almost everything they owned.

They fled the burning home in bare feet.

But they didn’t go shoeless for long.

Someone bought new shoes for the whole family. It was one of the earlier examples of community generosity that continues.

As the displaced family gathers in the motel room their voices alternate — and sometimes bounce off each other, like AM radio signals at night — as they recite the litany of donations.

Clothes.

Free meals.

Lodging assistance from the American Red Cross and the Northeast Oregon Compassion Center in Baker City.

Offers of appliances and furniture for the home they hope to move into soon.

“We’re very thankful for the goodwill that we have received from everybody,” Kathy said, her voice again thickened by tears. “It feels like a barn raising, the way people have come together to help.”

“People we don’t even know have helped,” Ryan said.

Kathy recalls that even as their home was still smoking, and they still stood, barefoot, watching, several people driving by stopped and handed them cash.

Ryan, who served four years in the U.S. Navy and has worked for nine years for Northwood Manufacturing, a trailer factory in La Grande, said Rick Gloria, Baker County’s veteran services officer, has also helped.

Yet even as the family recounts the many acts of generosity bestowed on them, their smiles disappear when the subject of the pets is broached.

Their dog Mars, a 12-year-old chocolate Lab/cocker spaniel mix, died.

So did two of their three cats — Fatso, who was Felicia’s, and Booger, who was Kathy’s favorite.

Only one cat, Tonto, an indoor-outdoor pet who happened to be outside when the fire started, survived.

“The most heartbreaking loss was the animals,” Kathy said. “They were our support animals. We just really, really loved them.”

Mars — the name, she said, was mostly inspired by the candy bar — was the “best dog I’ve ever had.”

She laughed as she recalled Mars’ ability to grab a garden hose and deftly aim the spray at an unsuspecting person who was just trying to water the lawn.

“Things can be replaced,” Kathy said. “The animals can’t.”

Still and all, the inanimate objects, the keepsakes and mementoes the family members have accumulated over the years and decades, constitute a loss that can’t be calculated with the cold entries in a ledger.

Kathy, for instance, laments the loss of her collection of Stephen King novels, assembled over more than 30 years.

“Ninety percent were first editions,” she said.

A few items were intact even after the fire, though, and Kathy is grateful for one in particular.

It’s the only photo Kathy has of her younger brother, Rick Gryder, who died in 2019. After the fire, her younger son, Austin, went through the rubble and found the photo.

Although the frame was destroyed, the photo endured.

“I’m so thankful,” Kathy said. “That photo is irreplaceable.”

The fire

Dan was the first to notice something amiss.

He was awakened by one of the house’s three smoke detectors blaring.

Although he was familiar with the layout of the house as only a person can be who has long lived in the same space, and could get around even at night, the thick black smoke concealed all reference points.

“I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me,” he said.

Dan rushed to alert Ryan and Felicia in their room.

He had inhaled so much smoke that he couldn’t yell, so he had to pound on their door and on the door of the other bedroom.

Kathy was inside, snuggling with her cat, Booger, and watching a movie.

When Dan managed to open the door, smoke poured in so thickly that Kathy, who walks only with the aid of a cane and mainly uses her wheelchair, feared she couldn’t find her way out.

Dan and Ryan made a path of sorts to the rear door, since the smoke was thickest in the front of the home.

Felicia led Kathy to safety, but only after a struggle to even find her mother-in-law.

“It was so smoky in there I couldn’t tell where she was,” Felicia said.

Dan said that when he left the living room it was engulfed in flame. He was treated that day for smoke inhalation.

Kathy also had to go to the hospital on Tuesday for lingering effects from the smoke she ingested.

The heat was so intense that it melted one side of Dan’s truck, parked outside.

Ryan said insurance will cover damage to the pickup, but “not much else.”

A Baker City Fire Department truck arrived within minutes after the fire was reported, the family said.

Although they know the the department is understaffed — Jaynes, the chief, and two firefighters were on duty when the call came in — all four said they doubt the home could have been saved regardless.

Kathy said there was an electric fan for the fireplace, and that it apparently was connected by an extension cord in the attic.

Although the family is excited about the prospect of moving into a new home — and one that’s somewhat larger than the house that burned — the effects of the traumatic experience on July 28 likely will linger.

“It’s hard,” Kathy said. “I can’t sleep. I’m trying to work through it.”

“The most heartbreaking loss was the animals. They were our support animals. We just really, really loved them. Things can be replaced. The animals can’t.”

— Kathy Gryder-Davlin, whose family lost their dog and two cats in the fire that destroyed their home on July 28