Help This Family Recover from Camping Tragedy

Hello everyone! I want to start by saying that every few minutes my family and I all remember how insanely lucky we are to be alive—and it’s something we’ll never forget after this experience.

On Monday, July 28th at 3:15 am, my family (husband, 11-year-old daughter, 1.5-year-old son, and myself) were camping at Tollgate Campground on Mt. Hood in a site right next to my best friend and her family when a tree came down on our campsite.

As it was falling, we grabbed our kids and braced ourselves, thinking it was going to come down directly on top of us. The sounds and feeling of the ground shaking is something that will stick with all of us for the rest of our lives. By the grace of whatever any of us believe in, not even a tree branch hit our tent. But the tree came down directly on top of our brand new car that we’ve only had for 9 months. Insurance will take care of our existing loan, but now we face financial troubles trying to get into a new one. We put down $3500 on our original vehicle when we bought it and unfortunately we have no savings to be able to put any money down on another car.

I'm here to simply ask for help to get by and to hopefully get our family back into a vehicle we both love and can fit into again. We’re collecting and returning cans to supplement our grocery budget, but cans won’t get us very far in this situation. Thank you to everyone who checked in on us and has sent us well wishes. We’re so thankful to be alive and uninjured after this crazy event.