OR Firefighters who Lost Homes Back Keeping Community Safe

Scarred and scattered by the Holiday Farm Fire, volunteers of the Upper McKenzie Rural Fire Protection District are back at work while processing their own personal losses. 

District Chief Christiana Rainbow Plews said her staff is not back to full strength, but reinforcements that helped with emergency calls in the wake of the fire have departed.

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While she and her crew take stock of what they've lost, their daily mission continues.

"The community, as it repopulates here, needs 9-1-1 services," Plews said.  

Volunteer EMS personnel and two fire crews from Idaho for the past several weeks were helping fill the gaps, Plews said. With them gone, those are local responsibilities again.

"We're back to protecting the district on our own," Plews said. 

Plews and district volunteers find themselves protecting an almost unrecognizable valley. Scorched landscapes and fire-ravaged towns such as Blue River bear little resemblance to the green and sleepy homes that existed only a few weeks ago. 

"When the smoke cleared, I felt like it was actually worse because I could see how far spread the destruction was," Plews said. "It was just heartbreaking. It was just awful." 

The Holiday Farm Fire on Wednesday was 80% contained and expected to shrink with the oncoming rainy months, the Oregon Department of Forestry said. The fire still was burning in more than 173,000 acres and has destroyed at least 430 homes.

Plews lost her Vida home in the fire and is living in an RV outside a church on Highway 126. Some district volunteers also lost homes, and not all have yet returned to the valley. 

One volunteer is sleeping at the fire station, Plews said. Another is staying with a friend. Others still are with their families in Eugene and Springfield. Some department jobs, like communications, have to be done out of town because local service still is unreliable.

"The fire department is very fractured right now," Plews said of her all-volunteer staff of more than 50 people responsible for 45 miles between Springfield and Blue River.

Plews and her volunteers are responding to emergency calls such as car crashes, medical emergencies and house fires. Though the still-burning Holiday Farm Fire is out of their hands, Plews said a recent house fire renewed a sense of anxiety for her volunteers. 

"It was not good timing," Plews said. "We were all very traumatized. As soon as the announcement came across that we had a house fire, everyone said 'Oh no, not again.'"

Plews on Tuesday returned with borrowed metal detectors to what remains of her home. It was the first time she'd picked through the rubble, searching for the family's irreplaceable items. 

Her grandfather's medals from World War II, Christmas ornaments gifted to her by her grandmother when she was still young — Plews said there wasn't much hope for those heirlooms.

"I'm pretty sure that's all lost, but we're going to look," she said. 

Though the exercise was emotionally taxing, it still gave her what has become rare time with her family, who were split up by the fire and living across the region in hotels and trailers. 

"I'm really not able to see them much because I need to be here," Plews said.  

Plews' story spread quickly after the Holiday Farm Fire began, reaching statewide and national audiences through frequent media interviews. A GoFundMe page for Plews has raised more than $86,800, and other pages have raised money for local firefighters.

Plews said hundreds from across the country donated to rebuilding her department. 

"It's amazing how generous people have been," Plews said. 

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