Firefighters finish extinguishing the fire around Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos' vehicle at her home in the Mill Park neighborhood of Portland, Ore., on Oct. 26, 2025.
Courtesy of Dennis Weis via Portland Fire & Rescue
City Councilor Candace Avalos is concerned Portland law enforcement officials aren’t taking the investigation into the Sunday fire at her house seriously.
“I am concerned that police leadership may be jumping to conclusions before the investigation is complete,” Avalos said in a statement emailed to OPB on Friday.
Avalos awoke to flames engulfing her car, carport and the side of her Mill Park house early Sunday morning.
On Monday, more than 24 hours after the blaze, investigators with the Portland Police Bureau and Portland Fire & Rescue said that there was “no evidence” to suggest that Avalos was the intended target of the Sunday morning fire. They said they found no accelerant or incendiary device near the fire, which appeared to originate in a storage shed near Avalos’ home.
Related: ‘Suspicious’ fire erupts overnight at Portland city councilor’s home
But Avalos has pushed back on that quick conclusion. That’s because her office received a threatening email four days before the fire.
“Hope the entire state burns and your house is the first one to go,” reads the email sent Oct. 22, obtained by OPB. It’s signed “Most Normal American Citizens.”
The subject of the email is “Resolution 37719,” which is the name of a council resolution co-authored by Avalos and adopted by City Council on Oct. 15. That resolution denounced the deployment of federal law enforcement officers to Portland.
The email was sent to Sofia Diffee, a policy advisor in Avalos’ office whose email often appears on legislation Avalos introduces. Avalos said the email is evidence that “no conclusions can yet be drawn” about whether she was the intended target of the fire.
Senior Policy Advisor Sofia Diffee and District 1 councilor Candace Avalos go door-to-door discussing the opinions of East Portland residents in Portland, Ore., Aug. 8, 2025. Avalos is one of the newly elected District 1 councilors, a district that has been notoriously underrepresented in the past.
Morgan Barnaby / OPB
“I want to make it clear that I do not know, nor am I assuming, that the fire that destroyed my car and damaged my home was politically motivated or targeted at me,” Avalos told OPB. “What I do know is that there is evidence to suggest multiple possibilities.”
She said she has urged police leaders to “refrain from speculation” about the fire until all facts are known.
Related: City says there’s ‘no evidence’ that Councilor Avalos was targeted by house fire
In a statement emailed to OPB, police spokesperson Mike Benner said the bureau stands by the information that they have already released about the fire. He said PPB recognizes the “emotional and personal toll” that the fire has taken on Avalos.
The case is reminiscent of another fire set at a city official’s house.
In January 2024, someone set fire to a car outside of then-Commissioner Rene Gonzalez’s Eastmoreland home. While officers concluded within hours that the fire appeared to be intentionally set, they never identified a suspect.
Last December, days before leaving City Hall, Gonzalez threatened to sue the city over how slow they were to investigate the alleged arson.
