This story is part of KLCC's coverage of the five-year anniversary of Oregon's historic Labor Day wildfires.
It’s been five years since the Holiday Farm Fire raged through the McKenzie River valley. It burned more than 173,000 acres, including most of the community of Blue River.
Patence Winningham was Lane County Emergency Manager at the time. She lives in McKenzie Bridge, just a few miles east of the fire’s devastation. That’s where she was when the fire started on the night of Sept. 7, 2020.
On a late summer morning five years later, Winningham stood alongside the McKenzie High School football field in Blue River.
“Well, I went to high school here, so I’m a McKenzie alum,” she said. “And this is somewhat of a lighthouse for the community in that it survived the holiday farm fire.”
Firefighters were able to keep the flames from burning the school down. But the old wooden grandstand was destroyed.
“You know, that was all wood. That was all stick built grandstands before.” said Winningham. “Now they built it back. It’s all metal. It is not going to burn again. So, if there were a fire to move across this landscape. That will still be standing whereas the rest of the school might not be.”
When the Holiday Farm fire happened, Winningham was Lane County emergency manager. Not only was she in the role of managing the disaster, but the fire was in her hometown.
"Never in my entire career in emergency management did I think that I would experience one of the largest disasters in Lane County. It just wasn't in my bingo card, nor did I anticipate it,” Winningham said.
The COVID pandemic was another consideration as first responders and emergency managers dealt with the wildfires in September of 2020. Winningham said, by that time, the vaccine had become available, but there were still mandates against large gatherings.
“So how do we put people in hotels instead of mass shelters to prevent spread? We were working through vaccination clinics and we had them all stood up,” she said. “And then we had this fire which resulted in all kinds of different complexities.”
There was a lot to think about.
“Oh, it was nuts. It was completely bananas. And then my whole family was displaced,” she said. “My niece, my best friends. My community, they were all living in hotel rooms while I'm at the emergency operation center supporting the response efforts, right? My own daughter was on the Beachie Creek fire. She's on a fire crew. They had to be evacuated from their incident command post, and she was at some hotel.
"Communications were degraded, so I was unable to communicate with her. My son decided to drive to Roseburg. And my husband stayed in McKenzie Bridge to help the elderly that refused to leave, to ensure that he could help them get out quickly if necessary. So, I didn't speak to my husband for 20 days.”
Most of Winningham’s family were involved in helping during the fires.
“My brother ran the Upper McKenzie Community Center Recovery Center. He was helping support as a liaison to the county,” she said. “My sister was running the school district recovery center, so yeah, my whole family was 100% engaged. This is where all the gray hair comes from.”
But, for Winningham, the work of organizing and working to help the community was a way of coping with the grief and loss brought by the wildfire.
“I think it, the, it's the white noise, right, that keeps your mind busy so you're not thinking about the impacts that your community is experiencing,” she said.
“I mean, that night when that fire kicked off at Holiday Farm, and we knew it was going to keep moving down the canyon, my first phone call was to my friends, like, just pack whatever you can. Don't ask questions, just go. And tell your neighbors because that was the only thing I could know to tell them.
"And, unfortunately I was stuck in McKenzie Bridge for about 24 hours before the county sent somebody to come get me because I just was, I think I was a little bit in shock. I didn't know exactly how I was going to support not only my community and my family, but also my responsibility as the emergency manager for the county. But, the county knew it. They were like, you're gonna need to take a minute. We got this.”
Finally, the county got Winningham out. She got dropped off at the same hotel where her daughter was staying in Eugene. The next day Winningham got to work.
“I grew up in Blue River, so I was a child that moved from house to house to house in Blue River, seven kids, with all my cousins and my aunts and uncles,” she said. “So when I walk down the streets and I think about what was there, it's gone. It's gone forever. It will never be what it was when I was a kid, but it's gonna be new.
"And what I see now is a community that's really getting behind one another, and the library is phenomenal. I mean, I was a kid running around in the library reading books and following Miss O'Brien around. I could still just remember her talking to me about the children's section and how to use the card catalog and to see that become, what it is for the community now is just amazing.”
In the last five years, the library, fire station, and health clinic have been rebuilt in Blue River. But Winningham says the community needs more, including housing, for the next generation.
Patence Winningham is now the Deputy Director of the Oregon Department of Emergency Management.
