An employee of 3R’s Construction adjusts a respirator mask in early 2020 while helping with the company’s free disinfection of first response vehicles. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
When I turned in my cameras at the end of my final shift as a photojournalist with the Statesman Journal almost exactly 20 years ago (Jan. 30, 1999) there was no such thing as a digital online newspaper. I simply assumed that my days of covering the news with a camera , the best job in the world, had come to an end.
I was sitting at home watching as one of the most significant news stories of my lifetime unfolded while I was on the sidelines.
When the offer came to be part of the news coverage team at the Salem Reporter, I accepted without hesitation. I had only one reservation. At my age I was considered in a high-risk group for Covid infection and I requested only assignments where I would not be in close proximity with others.
I began helping with the Salem Reporter’s Covid news coverage but little did I know that the Black Lives Matter protests and the catastrophic Santiam Canyon wildfire would also occur in the same year. Big news events frequently occur with big photo opportunities and these are some of my favorites from 2020.
A blackened swing set frames the destruction in Gates on Saturday, Sept. 19. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
I had seen big fires before but never one in which whole towns were consumed in minutes. While the opportunity to cover the fire damage was exciting, it was sad and depressing at the same time. This photo shows a swing set in a playground and an automobile both destroyed by the fast-moving fires. In the background, a motel and retail space in Gates are burned to the ground. The lives of many people had been profoundly changed.
A deer sculpture, intact despite the intensity of wildfire in September 2020, stands before a vinyl fence warped by heat and the remnants of a home in Gates. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
Powerful images of loss and destruction were everywhere in the Santiam Canyon. This one was particularly striking, At the site where a house was completely gutted by fire, the heat melted a plastic fence that once surrounded the view property. Still standing on ground that was scorched by fire was a concrete replica of a small buck deer seemingly untouched by the blaze.
A fire engine was destroyed by wildfire that swept through Detroit in September 2020. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
Several years after my retirement I began learning to use a new type of camera, the flying camera drone. The canyon wildfire was my first real use of the drone to cover a news story and it was an amazingly powerful tool. This ironic photo shows both a burned fire truck and the Detroit Fire Station in Detroit, totally leveled by the wildfire. The aerial perspective allowed me to show both the truck and the ruins of the fire station in one complete photo.
During the fire and for weeks after, Detroit and almost all of the Cascades was under a “No Fly” order from the Federal Aviation Administration and I was not able to fly my drone until the flight restriction was lifted.
A note was tacked to the destroyed fire engine used by Detroit-area volunteer firefighters. Firefighters had to abandon the truck in September 2020 while rescuing civilians from the advancing fire. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
As I searched the wreckage of a burned fire truck in Detroit, I came across a tiny expression of appreciation stuck to the side of the scorched truck.
Salem police officer Kevin Ramirez joins marchers in the March for Floyd event on Saturday, June 6. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
During a massive Black Lives Matter protest march through downtown Salem, my camera captured the smiling face of a Salem police officer marching alongside demonstrators. It was a moment of grace and encouragement, especially since police officers were the focus of anger and hostility from some of the protestors.
Thousands of people marched to protest police brutality in Salem Saturday, June 6. Sgt. Jon Hardy of the Salem Police Department precedes the march. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
I’ve covered marches and mass demonstrations in Salem since 1969 but the Black Lives Matter protest int 2020 was the biggest I had ever photographed . I brought a step ladder so I could see and photograph over the heads of the first row of marchers. As the march approached I was astonished at the vast sea of protest signs and faces I could see in my camera.
Smoke from wildfires in September 2020 creates an orange atmosphere in Salem. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
Smoke casts a pall over State Street in downtown Salem in September 2020. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
The word “apocalyptic” is overused but it seemed an appropriate word to describe almost a week of heavy thick smoke that flooded into Salem and then across most of the state from the Santiam Canyon wildfires. An eerie reddish sky in the early morning and again at sunset turned familiar objects into scenes from a science fiction movie. I had never encountered such conditions in all the time I worked as an active photojournalist.
Charred chairs are about all that is standing after a building in Santiam Canyon was destroyed by wildfire in September 2020. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
Three scorched metal chair frames stand upright in the rubble of a structure completely leveled to the ground by the wildfire as it burned through Gates. I wondered if someone left the chairs and fled the tiny Santiam Canyon community as the wildfire raged into town.
New growth emerges in the burned forest in the Santiam Canyon. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
A cold, dead forest remains after wildfire swept through the North Fork Santiam region east of Salem in September 2020. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
On a photo trip in the Little North Fork Canyon for a potential story about salvage logging in the aftermath of the fire, I was deeply saddened by the widespread destruction of the green, moss, luxurious ferns and giant Douglas Fir trees that I remembered from trips with my family. The fire driven by high winds raged with such intensity down the narrow canyon that it blew entire trees out of the ground at root level, leaving them a blackened jumble on the forest floor.
Just a few hundred feet away from where i photographed the tree jumble, I spotted a patch of deep green, jutting from the ground and contrasting wildly with the blackened soil, trees and rocks. The healing process will take years to complete but is already underway.
A logging crew in November 2020 salvages timber in the Santiam Canyon following the September wildfires that burned across thousands of acres of national and private forestland. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
At the end of a rainy November day, I came across a crew working to clean up the burned trees that posed a danger to anyone traveling along the roadways in the canyon. The crews were working a schedule of 10-hour days, seven days a week. As I watched the worker approach through my telephoto lens I could see his exhaustion with every step he took.
Two burned homes on each side of the North Santiam River at Gates show the potential for household and agricultural pollutants to flow into the river, a major source of Salem’s drinking water. Five hundred homes, many close to scenic waterways, were burned in the September wildfires. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
I quickly realized that there was no way a photograph from the ground could convey the massive damage caused by the wildfire in the surrounding hillsides and along the North Santiam River. Once again, the drone was the tool of choice and produced striking photos of the wildfire’s aftermath. A rainstorm was approaching down the canyon and the dramatic colors of the stormy sky provided stark contrast to the burned hillsides.
A drone photo shows the extensive damage in Detroit as two wildfires converged near the town in September 2020. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
Once again, the photo drone was the perfect tool for showing the extent of the wildfire damage to the city of Detroit. Almost every structure adjoining Highway 22 in Detroit was burned to the ground.
Wildfire burned in a mosaic across forestlands in the Santam Canyon in September 2020, leaving a mix of burned and intact forest. (Ron Cooper/Salem Reporter)
At one of my favorite scenic spots along the Little North Fork River was a place where the clear green water of the Little North Fork ran into a solid wall of stone and took a sharp turn to the left. The area was burned heavily and salvage logging was underway nearby. To get a complete look at the massive damage in the canyon I launched my drone and photographed this scene of devastation.
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Photographer Ron Cooper and his wife Penny moved to Salem in 1969 to take a job as photographer at the Oregon Statesman (later the Statesman Journal). Their three children, Monica, Kimberly, and Christopher, attended and graduated from Salem public schools. Cooper retired from the Statesman Journal in 2001 but, has continued his passion for photography in many ways, including as a photographer for the Salem Reporter.
