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‘We won’: Navajo Nation lifts all evacuations as Oak Ridge Fire nears containment [1]
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Date: 2025-07-09
As the Oak Ridge Fire approaches containment, most families in the evacuation zones can now unpack their emergency bags, and those who were evacuated can finally return home after being displaced for nearly two weeks.
“We started out with a whole lot of evacuations, with a lot of people out of their homes,” said Bill Morse, public information officer for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team 2. “It has progressively gotten better, better and better.”
As of July 8, the Navajo Nation Police Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs–Navajo Region, and Southwest Complex Incident Management Team 2 lifted all evacuation statuses.
“No evacuations of any type are in effect,” according to the responding agencies. “All residents are allowed to return to their residences.”
The Oak Ridge Fire has burned more than 11,000 acres and is now 87% contained.
During a town hall meeting on Tuesday, Navajo Nation Police Sgt. Wallace Billy said that, throughout the Oak Ridge Fire response, they saw the Navajo communities come together to fight the fire and win.
“We didn’t lose anyone. We did not lose any structures,” Billy said. “We won.”
Oak Ridge resident Nelson Roanhorse has a ranch that borders the southwestern parts of the fire area.
When the fire started pushing further west, he said if it weren’t for the air tankers dropping fire retardant on his ranch area, it would not have survived.
“We were very thankful for that,” Roanhorse said during the town hall meeting. He expressed his gratitude for the more than 600 fire personnel who responded to the Oak Ridge Fire.
As work toward recovery continues, Billy said the public needs to remember that the fire zone remains off limits.
Billy said Navajo Nation police have blocked off the main roads leading into the fire zone throughout the fire response, and they have had no reports of break-ins.
The Navajo Nation Police Department has issued a public safety closure surrounding the fire area, as it remains an active incident with firefighters and equipment working to achieve full containment of the fire.
“In the burn area, there is nothing left,” Billy said.
Hazards such as stump holes, ash pits and hazardous trees still exist within the fire footprint, according to the responding agencies. Additionally, members of the Burn Area Emergency Response Team will collect valuable data for post-fire recovery and response.
Families living in the fire zone of Oak Ridge Fire will need to be escorted to their homes due to ongoing safety concerns, even though the evacuation orders have been lifted.
“There are still a lot of safety issues in that area, and we just want to make sure they can make it there safely and come out safely,” Billy said. He said that five families live in the fire zone.
Father Lives in Oak Ridge Fire Zone
For one family in Oak Ridge, experiencing the Oak Ridge Fire often left them frustrated and lost as they navigated the updates posted online and the resources available on the ground.
Tamara Walker said her 70-year-old father’s house is situated in the middle of the mountainous areas of Oak Ridge. His home is in the western part of the fire zone area, and it falls under a public safety closure that prevents him from returning home.
She said they have been told he can be escorted to the homesite to check in on the place, but he is not allowed to move back in yet fully.
Her father is staying with her brother in the Window Rock area, and they have received word that they must remove their livestock from the Navajo Nation fairgrounds by noon on July 10.
Her father still cannot return home, and it has resulted in them scrambling to make a temporary corral for the sheep.
Walker said the situation has been very overwhelming, and the family is “disappointed in the Navajo Nation’s assistance” for their family.
Her father has lived in Oak Ridge for years. It was initially the family’s sheep camp, but her father built a house there and started living in it full-time.
The home is located eight miles off Pine Springs Road on Highway 264, and it was directly in the path of the fire when it started spreading on June 29.
Walker said she heard about the fire the evening it started because friends and family started calling her to ask if her father was OK.
Initially, she said they weren’t able to get in contact with her father because the cell phone reception in Oak Ridge is not reliable.
Walker lives five hours away in Phoenix, so she couldn’t simply drive up to Oak Ridge to check on him. It took a while, but when she finally reached her dad, he told her he was OK and that he didn’t want to leave.
“I told him to leave, because you don’t know where the fire is going, it could switch anytime,” Walker said, but her dad was adamant that he wanted to stay.
On June 29, Walker said she called the Navajo Nation incident command center to see how they could help. The Navajo Police Department Window Rock District, Navajo Nation Division of Transportation and the Navajo Nation Fire and Rescue Services conducted a welfare check on Walker’s father in Oak Ridge.
She didn’t learn about the wellness check until the Navajo Nation Police Department posted it on their Facebook page, along with photos of her father and his home.
The Navajo Nation Police Department wrote on Facebook that, upon arrival at the residence, “the 70-year-old community member was found safe, and he expressed gratitude for checking on his well-being.”
“I was upset,” Walker said, and she did reach out to the incident command center, but they referred her to the police department.
At this point in the response, the fire zone Walker’s father lived in was under “set” orders, meaning they should be prepared to leave. That quickly changed at 9 p.m. on June 29, when the Navajo Nation Department of Emergency Management announced that the fire had grown to over 1,800 acres and that people in the area now needed to evacuate.
Walker said she got a call from her father, who told her that the evacuations started and he was required to leave.
“He was crying and told me that he had to leave, but he couldn’t get the animals,” she said. “I was shocked to hear him cry and hear his hurt voice.”
Walker said her father evacuated on June 30 and stayed in a hotel that night, eventually staying with family in Window Rock.
He was evacuated right away, but Walker said his livestock and dogs were not, despite her father being assured by officials that they would be picked up.
“I don’t know if there was a miscommunication,” Walker said, because they never came back, and it was up to her older sister and nephew to race up to Oak Ridge to get the livestock out.
“They rescued the animals,” Walker said. “My family risked their lives to go up there and rescue the animals themselves.”
Her father has 10 sheep and two horses that the family took down from Oak Ridge. The sheepdogs were unable to be evacuated because, when the family tried to capture them, they failed, and the dogs stayed behind.
“We didn’t get help from the Navajo Nation,” Walker said.
In the coming days, she said her dad was constantly worried about his home and was told repeatedly that he could not go up there.
“He was just lost. He didn’t know what to do,” she added.
Walker drove up to Window Rock to see her dad and began looking into the resources available to help. They ended up going to the shelter set up in Fort Defiance.
She filled out the paperwork for her father. He was seen by a nurse on site and stayed one night in the shelter, but did not like it and was able to stay instead with his family in the Window Rock area.
On July 1, Walker said they went to the incident command center to see if they could go back to her father’s home in Oak Ridge.
They were able to connect with Navajo Nation Police Lt. Tyler Lynch, who served as the incident commander for the Navajo Nation Department of Emergency Management.
“He did give us approval to go up there with an officer escort,” Walker said. They were escorted up to Oak Ridge on July 2 by two Navajo Nation police officers.
Her father’s home used to be surrounded by lush green forest and beautiful pine trees, but all of that has changed. Walker said that as they drove up to Oak Ridge, there was smoke everywhere, and trees were falling in different areas.
“Everything around the house is burned,” she said. “The house was not burned at all, which was good.”
The family’s sheep corral was burned, Walker said, and if they hadn’t gotten their sheep out, they likely would have perished.
“My dad cried,” Walker said when he saw his home.
But the sheepdogs were fine. Walker said her father was happy that they were still there. They weren’t able to take them back down the mountain, but they made sure they were fed and watered.
Seeing the environment around her father’s home burned and destroyed left them in disbelief, Walker said, and raised concerns about how they would now graze their sheep in the area with nothing left.
“It’s just sad,” she said. “It’s all burned.”
Going through this experience has left the family heartbroken, Walker said, because they never thought it would happen to them.
The family will have to find new feeding resources for the sheep, she said, and they need to work on getting the home site back in working order.
“My dad was pretty hurt with it since the day he left the place, and I never heard him cry that much, and I cried with him,” Walker said, because the land their father’s home is on belongs to her great-grandmother.
Walker said her father lives there and raises sheep in the area, which is how he stays connected to his grandmother, as he is carrying on the family tradition.
She said she hopes her father will get to go home permanently soon.
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