JOHN DAY — Jason Wright piled socks, underwear, jeans and shirts in a shopping cart in the Pavilion building at the county fairgrounds Monday. The clothing — all donated — signaled the start of a new life.

Wright and his family were in Pendleton when fire engulfed the Sheep Creek home they had rented for six years.

“We got a call at 11:30 Friday from a neighbor and he told me, ‘Your house is on fire, and there’s no reason to come back,’ ” Wright said.

“I didn’t get my pictures of my daughter. I lost my pick-up and four-wheeler. The only thing we had was the clothes on our backs,” Wright said.

His wife, Aimee Wright, and daughter, Carle, are staying in a fifth-wheeler offered to them by a local friend.

He described the experience in one word: “traumatic.”

Yet, Wright, who has lived here since he was 2 years old, has nothing but praise for the community.

“I have to brag on the people around here,” Wright said. “The way people are coming together is unbelievable. It’s making me so happy to see what the community can do while going through so many changes.”

Only one of Wright’s neighbors’ homes was saved, he said.

“God must have been watching her house. It’s still standing,” added Wright, who thanked the firefighters.

He looked over the clothes in his shopping cart and sighed.

“We’re rising from the ashes, literally.”