FRANK ARMENDARIZ/PHOTO Blue River, a scene repeated all over the McKenzie River Valley, where over 800 homes and structures have been lost.
Friends and neighbors, it is a calamity of an immensity our county has never seen. Yes, we have had powerful wind storms, heavy snow storms and major flooding happens every decade or so.
The Holiday Farm Fire has forced us all to face a new reality of loss.
West Lane County commissioner Heather Buch, when speaking of the fire damage she had seen on a tour through her district said “The McKenzie Valley is unrecognizable.” As I write this column, about 850 structures had been lost, including about 750 homes. About 400 homes have survived the fire but likely have extensive smoke damage.
Last week I shared two exclusive videos of what were once Blue River and Vida, Ore., that give credence to Buch’s observation. The destruction has been catastrophic and little in the McKenzie Valley has been unaffected. The facts of the wind-driven event have been widely reported, so I won’t recount them here. Instead, let me share a few personal insights.
My history in the McKenzie Valley as a river guide goes back 40 years. I am a longtime member of the McKenzie River Guides Association – the oldest association of river guides in the world, founded on the banks of the McKenzie in 1932.
Many of our members are the descendants of the pioneer families who first settled the McKenzie Valley. Third-, fourth- and now fifth-generation Oregonians who have been stewards of the river and preservers of a heritage unique to our state.
Sadly, there are a number of our members who have lost their ancestral homes.
In fact, losses among our guide members and associate members have been devastating and heartbreaking for those of us who could only watch in despair as the Holiday Farm Fire raced down the valley … consuming so much in its path.
A social media post that I shared prompted friends Robin and Linda Alexander to contact me about the origin of the photo. It had been taken by a Leaburg hatchery worker as the last of the ODFW employees fled the hatchery ahead of the fire. The photo showed fire bearing down on the hill just behind the Leaburg hatchery where the Alexander family home has been for decades.
Robin and Linda were evacuated to a hotel in Cottage Grove, sitting on pins and needles, not knowing if their home had survived. But a story emerged that gave them hope. Apparently, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife hatchery employee took time – before releasing fish into the hatchery and being later evacuated himself – to walk among the homes and hatchery grounds, putting out the spot fires.
PHOTOS BY FRANK ARMENDARIZThe McKenzie River is just several feet away, the late summer fire driven by strong winds found plenty of fuels to rage down river.
He might have helped save some of those homes.
The call came last week, and it was good news. My friends’ home had survived. Robin wrote to me: “We do know our home made it through the fire. We also know some of our neighbors’ homes didn’t make it. We feel so humble and lucky right now.”
I had written in Spring 2019 of a “weekend of R&R” that my wife Tami and I had spent at The McKenzie River Inn. The lodge was located directly on the bank, and has been operated by Bert DeClerk and Annie Margarita for nearly three decades. Annie is an accomplished artist who taught art classes at the lodge, and Bert – in addition to running the lodge – is an experienced fly fishing guide.
The McKenzie River Inn did not survive. The main building and all the apartments that dated back to the 1930s burned to the ground. My friends had only minutes to evacuate and left with only the clothes on their backs. Annie also lost her art studio and supplies and several completed projects. Bert’s fishing gear is also gone, as is a late-model vehicle. A short note made me aware of how traumatized they are and how difficult it has been to place their minds around the amount of loss. Most heartbreaking is that there are several hundred other families just as distraught.
In 2019 James Baker, a longtime Finn Rock (near Blue River) resident turned 90 years old and the community came out to celebrate what has come to be called “James Baker Day.” A community potluck was organized and the upriver community gathered on the McKenzie High School field to honor one of the nicest gentlemen you would want to know. James’ home was a local landmark, a beautiful old home that sat above the road among a garden of old rhododendrons, azaleas, dogwoods and towering fir trees. The home was lost to the fire.
Baker
Like all of the Holiday Farm fire evacuees, James had only moments to escape the wind-driven flames. His account of escaping the fire is nothing short of harrowing:
“I was rescued by Yvette coming to awaken me at midnight. We drove out my driveway and pushed a fallen, burning tree with our car leaving the driveway clear for four other people who share the drive to also escape. A hundred yards from the highway (126) a tree had fallen on a car and it was burning. I didn’t know their names but the lady is a dancer and they lived next door to friends of mine. She had a young lady and two young men with her.
“The two men got out of their car, cleared off the burning tree and enough debris off the road to make it passable, but their car was not drivable. So they got in with us and we continued down the road until there was a third tree across the road just at the highway that was too large to move. We were trapped, there was no going back and we called 911. After a short while we saw red-and-blue lights through the trees; soon after fire personal started a chainsaw and cut us out. Driving through the fire in Finn Rock and downriver was just like all the pictures I have seen with fire on both sides of us, over us and debris on the road that was combusting everywhere.”
I restored this 1997 Keith Steele drift boat in 2016 and guided customers in it until 2018. It was one of Steele’s last boats that he completed before he passed away later that year. Stored in Nimrod it was lost to the fire. In the big picture a very small casualty of the Holiday Farm Fire.
James told me he drove down Highway 126 into Springfield and dropped off his neighbors at the Albertson’s parking lot, where some of their family were waiting. He then drove to Thurston High School, where a family member met him and took him to their home in Walterville.
The next morning the Walterville area was evacuated and James ended up at the home of a family friend in Ridgefield, Wash. James had so little time to escape he left everything behind, including his kittens.
James Baker had lived in the Finn Rock and Blue River community for 53 years; before retirement he worked for a phone company and had spliced phone lines all up and down the McKenzie Valley. I asked James if he was moving back. He replied, “Hell yes, there are still 60 acres of trees I own, not all of it has burned. And my rhododendron garden is mostly still there too. I will rebuild, somehow but at 91 it will be slow.”
I know a lot of people in the McKenzie Valley who share James Baker’s spirit.
You can write to Frank at [email protected].
