Patches the puppy reunited with owner after nearly dying in California’s McKinney Fire

James “Mac” Benton is now homeless, one of his roommates may be missing and he has no idea if three of his dogs and his cat are still alive.

But the 42-year-old Siskiyou County man got a needed dose of hope and relief Sunday when he gave a big hug to one of his pups, a wriggly 3-month-old pitbull named Patches that had been found inside the McKinney Fire’s 56,160-acre footprint.

Benton’s ordeal began Friday when he had to make a terrible choice as the McKinney Fire roared through his community of Klamath River.

Flames were burning all around the property he shared with at least four other people, two of whom lived in RVs. He’d managed to load one of his dogs — a French bulldog with a Native American name that roughly translates to “Moon Bear” — into the motor home that would take him and one of the people Benton lived with to safety.

He thought his other dogs — a German shepherd named Trooper and three pitbull puppies — were running right behind him as he made his way to the motor home.

But when he looked back, they had disappeared in the flames and smoke. He frantically called for them. They didn’t come.

“I tried to run back, but at that point I started, like, blacking out,” he told The Sacramento Bee on Monday. “I was fully suffocating and being blinded by the ash.”

As embers singed his skin and the smoke burned his eyes, he had no choice but to turn back to the motor home and drive away. As it was, Benton said he very nearly ended up like two of his neighbors who were unable to get out in time.

On Monday, Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jeff Moser said two people in Klamath River burned to death inside their vehicle. They got trapped behind a locked gate at the end of their driveway. They didn’t have time to open it before the flames overtook them, Moser said.

The same thing nearly happened to one the people who lived in motor homes on the property with Benton, he said.

“His camper caught on fire as he was leaving,” Benton said, “And he lost his dog and his cat in the fire.”

That man, however, was able to escape and hitch a ride out of the fire, Benton said.

But one of the other men that Benton lived with on the property, who he identified as John Cogan, Benton hasn’t been heard from since, he said.

“He refused to leave,” Benton said. “He said he was gonna stay there. He had been through this before and he was gonna stay and fight the fire or whatever. He was very stubborn.”

Around 100 homes or other buildings burned in the fire, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Courtney Kreider.

She said searchers have been doing “welfare checks” and going through the fire zone looking for people whose friends and loved ones reported them as potentially missing or who are unable to reach them.

“We’re sending crews out there just to search as thoroughly as possible to make sure everyone is accounted for,” she said Monday.

As for Benton’s pets, he spent two days not knowing if any of them survived.

Reunited with Patches

Then, on Sunday, Benton got a bittersweet surprise.

He learned Patches had been dropped at the Rescue Ranch, a nonprofit dog rehabilitation and adoption center in nearby Yreka.

The organization has taken in more than 130 dogs from the McKinney Fire. They’re a mix of dogs whose owners are evacuees and unable to keep them at hotels or shelters, or they’re dogs such as Patches found inside the firelines.

Jonathan Rivas, a freelance photographer, found Patches early Saturday morning as he toured the rubble of the homes that burned in Benton’s neighborhood the night before.

Footage he shot shows him filming the still-smoldering wreckage of Benton’s property when the pup suddenly emerges from the smoke.

“You happy to see somebody?” he says as the wiggly pup comes up to him. “What’s up? What’s your name? You OK?”

The footage shows the dog, whose whiskers are singed down to pitiful little nubs, hunching down so that Rivas can stroke its back. Rivas then loads Patches into his vehicle and gives the pup some water. Patches greedily laps it down before falling into an exhausted sleep.

Patches was reunited with a tearful, exhausted Benton Sunday afternoon at the Rescue Ranch.

Benton said Patches has been very happy to see his old pal, Moon Bear.

“They’ve been wrestling and playing and stuff,” Benton said. “They’re pretty happy to have each other because they were both alone before that.”

He’s still hopeful the other dogs and the cat he left behind are still alive, since they’d be sticking around with Trooper, the German shepherd.

“He’s very resourceful,” Benton said. “He’s a very smart dog.”

For now, Benton, like more than 2,000 other evacuees, remains stuck behind checkpoints unable to tour the wreckage and search for his lost pets.

Officials have given no indication of when the evacuation order will lift, and as of Monday morning, the fire was 0% contained.

Sacramento Bee photographer Sara Nevis contributed to this story.