Lane County has received and accepted a $4.1 million grant to continue recovery and reconstruction for the Holiday Farm Fire destruction.
Spanning from September 2020 to October 2020, the Holiday Farm Fire is among one of the largest fires in Oregon state history. The fire burned more than 173,000 acres of land in the McKenzie River Valley and destroyed about 770 homes and personal properties.
The grant was allotted by the Oregon Housing and Community Services for Holiday Farm Fire survivors for reconstruction, affordable housing development, home purchases infrastructure and recovery staffing. This grant is part of a larger sum of recovery reparations under Oregon House Bill 5006, which is set to administer $150 million across the state to address natural disasters, which includes wildfire recovery.
The Oregon Housing and Community Services has expressed that the funding of the grant will be flexible to the Board of County Commissioners, and according to the Board of County Commissioners, it will be mainly focused on infrastructure and the rebuilding of lost properties.
“We’ve set some very general parameters,” OHCS Chief External Affairs Officer Alex Campbell said. “We really set them based on our statutory authority based on how the Legislature appropriated those dollars. Part of the purpose of the grant is giving them the authority to make the best use of the dollars.”
According to Lane County, funds from the grant will also be used to support additional subprojects in the McKenzie River Valley.
“There are three main drivers that brought us to making sub-allocations to the grant,” Campbell said. “One being the speed of getting dollars out, another being providing for more local control and a third being making sure we’ve got equitable geographic distribution along the McKenzie Valley River.”
The biggest project alongside the Holiday Farm Fire recovery is an $800,000 grant for the development of multiple low-income single-family homes in the Blue River area, which was affected by the Holiday Farm Fire.
Another subproject will be the design and engineering of a stretch on Blue River Drive, known as “Downtown Blue River.” According to the Lane County, the Holiday Farm Fire removed all traces of property boundaries and affected the underground utilities of “Downtown Blue River.”
For Holiday Farm Fire survivors, Lane County Government will also be forming and conducting a McKenzie Valley Long Term Recovery Group for aid and funding from the fire’s destruction.
According to Lane County Government, the supervisors of the Holiday Farm Fire recovery project and survivors of the fire are in close communication for the future rebuilding of their lost community.
“These sub-allocations were out of a large pool of funds,” Campbell said. “The Oregon Legislature made these funds available to assist with all recovery needs for now and the future.”
