Scott Swanson
It was the chimneys, most of all, that left an impact.
“The number of chimneys – that’s all that’s left of the houses right now, chimneys lining the riverside,” said Sweet Home High School senior Treyson Smith of the devastation left by the Holiday Farms Fire, which he witnessed on a trip he took with fellow students to Finn Rock and other communities along the McKenzie River to help with fire recovery efforts.
“You get to the point that you just see chimneys, all along the road,” fellow senior Maren Weld said.
“It’s very somber.”
They were among a group of six Sweet Home students – the others were senior Savannah Hutchins, senior Sicily Neuschwander, senior Natalie Rodgers and sophomore Brooke Burke – who volunteered to help out on Nov. 7 at the Blue River Relief Center at McKenzie Community School.
The six are all Leadership students at the high school, but although they might typically be engaged in such activities during the school year, due to COVID restrictions they organized the trip on their own, Leadership instructor Tomas Rosa said.
“Maren talked about it on some of our Zooms,” he said, referring to how the class has been interacting during the COVID shutdown.
“She said, ‘You know what, I think we can do this on our own,’ which was a super cool thing.”
Weld said she found a website that told how to volunteer, made some calls and “finally landed on someone who worked at the relief center.”
They arrived at 9 a.m. that Saturday morning and after a tour of the relief center housed in the school gym, they went to work.
“It was like a mini big-box store,” Weld said. “Food, clothes, hygiene products, décor, laundry detergent, that kind of stuff.
“A family that’s been affected by the fire checks in at the desk and gets a shopping cart, they go get what they need and check out at the end.”
Smith said he was one of the volunteers who checked people out and helped sort donated clothing into piles sized for children and adults.
Weld said the students also had to figure out what to do with donations people brought in and “we did a lot of organizing.”
Smith said he was a little surprised that more people weren’t housed in that area.
“I thought there would be a lot more people at the place at a time,” he said. “They had an open area for people who needed a campsite, but it was more people got what they needed, then left. They were removed to another town. There are little towns out there.”
After their shift ended, at 2:30 p.m., Weld said, they went for a drive up the McKenzie Highway to Takoda’s, a filling station and diner located just up the road from the Holiday Farm RV Resort near Rainbow, where the fire started on Aug. 29.
“I feel like the majority of the destruction is definitely once we turned off of where the school was and went to where Takoda’s is,” she said. “The whole trailer park is just completely gone. You wouldn’t even know there was a trailer park out there.”
It wasn’t planned that way, but on the day the high schoolers were in McKenzie, Weld’s father Scott was also there through his Buck’s Sanitary Service, serving up lunch to some 150 residents of the area.
“Some of those customers have been with me for 20 years,” Scott Weld said. “They are good people. This is really unfortunate.”
Rosa said he was impressed by the students’ initative.
“This was entirely a student-led thing. They got in touch with McKenzie High School and they convoyed down there. It kind of makes you proud.”
He said he’s worked in small cohorts with students, who actually number more than usual this year for the class, participation in which is limited.
“I think we’re over 20 right now,” Rosa said, noting that he was concerned whether there would be interest, since the Leadership Class is responsible for organizing school assemblies and inter-class competitions and activities, none of which are happening – at least not in the normal way.
“The challenges are just crazy. I bring in a few kids at a time. We’re relying heavily on group messaging, video conferencing, all that stuff. We have a lot of pokers in the fire.”
Students have risen to the challenge, he said. They just completed their annual penny and food drive, by setting up a pop-up for each class in the high school parking lot, to which donors could drive through with coins and cans, which will go to Thanksgiving baskets and SHEM, respectively.
“We collected 1,400 pounds of canned food and over $2,100 in money in just two days,” Rosa said, noting “generous donations from the community.”
The class has a list of 25 families who will receive baskets, he said.
A lot of support has come from staff members.
“I can’t tell you how many staff came down with $20, $40, $80,” Rosa said.
He said he wondered how students would respond to the shutdown this fall, but he said the Leadership Class didn’t miss a beat.
“The kids are trying to figure out what the class competitions (which usually are held on campus during assemblies, lunch time and other community times at the high school) have to be,” he said. “They’re already thinking, ‘If we have to do social distancing in the spring, how do you do that?'”
He said they started the year by listing what normal life on campus is like and what kind of interaction would be possible under the restrictions.
Now they’re planning for a Winter Court (instead of Homecoming Court) and working on how to do student shout-outs during the shutdown.
“It’s normal to have a penny drive, so let’s do it. It’s normal to have shout-outs.”
“The kids are doing awesome,” he said. “We have kids that are go-getters. They’re exceeding my expectations. It’s been good for my heart, seeing the kids pull together in the name of community service.”