In the News: Residents gather to mark second anniversary of Holiday Farm Fire
Register-Guard
Other wildfires have burned in Lane County since a Labor Day 2020 wind storm kicked up destructive blazes across the state, but none had the same lasting effects as the Holiday Farm.
Two years later, McKenzie Valley residents are rebuilding. But, for many of them, it's happening too slowly, or not at all.
"It's been hard. Every day just brings new challenges," said Jim Watts, who lives in a camper where his house used to be.
The Holiday Farm Fire drove thousands of people from the valley, many just a step ahead of the conflagration as they raced down Highway 126 toward temporary shelters. Hundreds of homes burned, especially in the town of Blue River that was largely reduced to ruin. The steep, wooded landscape willremain scarred and burnt for years.
Watts has lived in the McKenzie River Valley since 1974, and until two years ago, his three acres on Highway 126 had a big house, a shop and a parking structure. Now, it's just his camper there, at least for the present.
"I lost everything I ever had in my life," Watts said.
The property is still marred by ruts gouged into the ground when recovery crews dragged burned trees from a nearby forest. Those crews left behind piles of slash and wood chips he can't get rid of on his own.
No one seems ready to take responsibility for the mess, even two years later. And so much of it is still on his property, a problem Watts said he knows other landowners in the McKenzie River Valley are struggling to correct on their own.
Watts was underinsured, and the high cost of contractors and building supplies made reconstruction out of reach until Thursday, when he finally secured a contractor to rebuild his home. Now he just needs his insurance to come through.
"It's a good feeling. I'll have a home. Of course, it's going to be a few years in the making," Watts said.
Flight from fire
U.S. Forest Service investigators haven't yet said how the Holiday Farm Fire started. But like the other wildfires sparked that day that would burn altogether 1 million acres, the Holiday Farm Fire wa
It started in the evening somewhere along Highway 126 around the Holiday Farm RV Resort, from which the fire takes its name. The wildfire raced downriver, chasing residents from their homes with burning hillsides in their rearview mirrors.
"Fire was everywhere," Watts said. "There were big, big chunks of fire falling out of the sky. Fire was all over the road."
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The Holiday Farm Fire grew from 37,000 acres on Sept. 8, 2020, to more than 100,000 acres 24 hours later, eventually reaching nearly 174,000 acres. It burned through the communities of Blue River, Finn Rock, Nimrod, Vida and Leaburg.
The Holiday Farm Fire killed one person, 59-year-old David Scott Perry, later found inside his burned home in Vida.
An Oregon Housing and Community Services report said 615 homes were either damaged or destroyed by the wildfire.
Most evacuees eventually landed in Eugene-Springfield, either with family and friends or sheltered in hotels. They came with little luggage, or none at all, forced to visit donation centers or spend money replacing essentials they left behind.
More than 1,400 wildfire survivors still were living in Lane County hotels and other accommodations by March 2020, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. Even now, 59 survivors of the 2020 Labor Day Fires still are living in two Lane County hotels.
Many Holiday Farm Fire survivors eventually were able to return to homes untouched by flame, whether because they lived farther upriver or chance spared their properties. Others spent months living in trailers waiting to start rebuilding.
219 apply to rebuild homes, 77 are complete
Sharon Sheets and her husband, Curtis, finally returned to their reconstructed home on Christmas Eve last year.
The first few days of their exodus from their Vida area house had them bouncing from hotel room to hotel room before they were finally able to find some stability, more than a month later, in a hotel room reasonably close to the home they fled.
Their home burned down, but they never had any other plans than to return.
"We'd lost everything, and the only way to regain anything is to rebuild," Sheets said.
Sheets said her family was adequately insured and found copies of her home's original blueprints, which made getting a rebuild permit easier. Sheets said they also were able to quickly secure a contractor, so rebuilding progressed quickly.
She was one of the lucky ones.
"There are only a few I know that are trying to rebuild, and most of them are far behind us," Sheets said.
Lane County had received 219 applications to rebuild fire-destroyed homes in the McKenzie River Valley as of Aug. 30, according to county data. The county has issued 120 of those home permits and currently is reviewing 13 more permits.
Only 77 homes have been completed with finalized permits, according to the data. That's 20 more than in late June, but the number of newly sought permits since that time only increased by four — from 215 in late June to 219 by Aug. 30.
But many who lost homes in the Holiday Farm Fire haven't returned — or never will return — to the McKenzie River Valley.
"We lost a lot of people that decided not to rebuild, whether it was because they didn't have the proper insurance or because they thought they were too old or didn't want to go through the hassle of trying to rebuild," Sheets said.
Challenge after challenge
The McKenzie River Valley remains a patchwork recovery. There's little rental or temporary housing available. Too many people are forced commute to Eugene and Springfield. Childcare services are slim. Home builders are in short supply.
"It's crazy. You keep thinking it's going to slow down a little bit, and it just keeps getting busier," said Dale Turnley, a contractor from McKenzie Bridge and a board member of the nonprofit McKenzie Valley Long Term Recovery Group. "Unfortunately, it's a lot of calls from people scrambling on insurance deadlines or dealing with shady contractors."
McKenzie River Valley residents who are rebuilding have had to overcome more than a few obstacles, from clearing the debris from their properties, to the ponderous, overburdened permitting process, to the ever-increasing cost of building supplies.
Turnley is an instrument of the recovery and is currently building two homes with many more on the list behind them. But he said, for contractors, there are too few builders available for hire, and for homeowners, there's still a lot of pain.
"It's finally picking up steam, but it's rather frustrating. It seems by the time we get things ironed out, there's another obstacle," Turnley said.
"There's a lot of people who are still hurting and who still have a lot of issues. It never fails, whoever you go to talk to about rebuilding a house, it's not only talking about the work, it's listening to their story."
Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch, who represents the McKenzie River Valley, said rebuilding after the fire has presented unique challenges, many of them land use issues that placed some significant barriers in front of survivors.
Though there's been success bringing people home, it's been much harder for the river valley's poorest residents. Buch said she wants to get back in front of state legislators to remind them many fire survivors still need their help.
"The one thing people fear most is that people will forget what happened up there," Buch said.
Mary Ellen Wheeler didn't lose her home, but as a founding member of the nonprofit McKenzie River Locals Helping Locals, she has been helping her neighbors and demanding government attention since before the fire was put out.
"We were the lucky ones," she said about her home. "We're two years in and still fighting for everything we can fight for to help them."
But the recovery, Wheeler said, is slow.
"We've gained some, but we have a long ways to go," Wheeler said. "We have just the slow process of getting things through the county and getting them approved. And then finding contractors, finding people who can come in and do the work, that's been really tough. We've had some people who were totally taken advantage of by the contractors."
Wheeler said McKenzie River Valley residents are resilient, and it helps they're in a place where neighbors know their neighbors.
"It's nice to see houses being put back up," Wheeler said. "But the biggest sign of hope is that we still all pull together as a community ... Everybody is still trying to work together. It's amazing what we can get done if everybody steps up."
Bearing the weight of recovery
Upper McKenzie Rural Fire Protection District Chief Christiana Rainbow Plews was, for a time, something of a celebrity.
As the Holiday Farm Fire raged, Plews and her volunteers were fighting back. Plews own home burned while they did.
Chief Rainbow for weeks appeared in multiple articles and on cable news shows, putting a face to the fire and speaking for those pushing back against the blaze when they themselves lost everything. Two years later, she wishes she hadn't.
"Looking back on it, I wish I would have kind of just holed up with my family. That was very hard on me, to kind of bear that weight. But I was glad to be able to tell our story and focus some resources and help in our direction," Plews said.
She said, for the community, rebuilding has been arduous, confusing and long. For many, leaving was the easier choice.
Plews worries that if the McKenzie River Valley can't bring back more people, the community will suffer as young adults struggle to find places to live, school enrollments fall and the economic and social benefits of young families dry up.
"The demographics of the valley are going to be, I think, vastly different than they were," Plews said.
But Plews said she feels like she's back on her feet, and so is the Upper McKenzie Rural Fire Protection District.
"I feel like my fire department is whole again, with the exception of the station and the apparatus that are still waiting to be replaced. I feel like my volunteers are in good places. All but one or two have returned to the valley," Plews said.
It hasn't been easy, she said. Some of her volunteer firefighters were part of the initial attack when the Holiday Farm Fire broke out, some of them lost homes. Plews said her department now makes its volunteers' mental health a top priority.
"I think that has encouraged folks to work through some of the trauma and stay volunteers," Plews said. "I know I sought mental health support as a leader and a traumatized home loser ... I was really hurting and I was really broken."
More proactive work needed to prevent future blazes
Lane County Emergency Manager Patence Winningham said the Holiday Farm Fire offered key lessons for the county, many of which have been deployed during wildfires around Oakridge in 2021 and 2022. The county is working to set up evacuation plans with local fire districts, as well as improving cooperation for first responders on the initial attacks.
"Coordination and communication across the board also has come a long way across all stakeholders who have a need to know, from public information to the dispatch centers to emergency managers to the fire chiefs," Winningham said.
But there is still risk of wildfire in McKenzie Valley, and Winningham said the government can't be its sole protector.
Though fuel in the Holiday Farm Fire burn scar is largely spent, there still are pockets of living forest throughout it. And outside the burn scar, the hillsides are still densely forested and suffering extreme and protracted drought conditions.
Winningham said McKenzie Valley residents have work to do managing their properties to avoid another wildfire.
"I live three miles up from where the fire started. If you drive the corridor in McKenzie Bridge, it's what Blue River and everything down looked like two years ago," Winningham said. "Nobody has taken the action to reduce those ladder fuels ... If people had, you would see it. You would noticeably see people have reduced the fuels around their home."
Plews sees it, too. Making the river valley safe isn't easy work, but those conditions put her volunteers at risk.
"Very few people are being proactive in creating defensible space around their homes. Very few are actually doing the work to clear space around their homes in the woods to survive wildfires," Plews said. "There's a lot of fear and awareness of what the fire can do when it becomes catastrophic, but not a willingness or ability to actually do the work to prevent that."
Contact reporter Adam Duvernay at aduvernay@registerguard.com. Follow on Twitter @DuvernayOR.