Homeless campers help clean up NE Bend fire site

It was once a well-established community: tents for every family, fire pits, some even had tables.

“Our tent was set up right here,” homeless veteran Evan Tipton said Thursday. “We had some friends over there. everyone got along, there was the canal for our pets.”

Now the camp, located in northeast Bend near Hamby and Neff roads, once home to about 20, is empty.

An unattended campfire a few weeks ago ignited a brushfire, officials said.

A homeless teen was charged with reckless endangerment, and several campers were charged with trespassing and told to leave.

On Thursday, some came back, with the help of the Central Oregon Veterans Outreach, to clean up.

The area is littered with trash, a broken-down vehicle and ransacked tents.

Tipton said while campers lived there, it was tidy and clean. But when the police gave them just 20 minutes to gather stuff and leave, they had to abandon belongings.

He said since then, other groups came in and stole belongings and trashed the camp.

COVO officials and about five transients came back to tidy up.

Only three veterans lived in the camp.

“We’ve all been in things that got out of hand,” said COVO spokesman Darin Darlington. “We can’t go back and fix it, all we can do is respond. And make it right”

Tipton said he lost his job two years ago when he got colon cancer. He and his wife have been homeless for about a year. They lived at the camp for about a month.

“(I want to) help out anyway I can,” Tipton said. “It makes me feel like I’m giving back a little bit. A lot of us don’t choose to be homeless, and we do try to get out — it’s just a lot harder than people think.”

Bags of trash collected, and much work to be done — a problem bigger than just garbage.

Darlington said kicking out the homeless “just moves the problem to another location. Very few of them have a roof over their head.”

Tipton said he and his wife just found a new place to live on BLM land a few days ago — and he’s hopeful his next move could be his last.

“We’ll be there a while, until we get a job and get our own place again,” he said.