Blue River Community Meeting
This morning at Roaring Rapids Pizzeria in Eugene, the unofficial mayor of Blue River, Melanie – “If you don’t know who I am you shouldn’t be eating this pizza” – organized a community meeting for evacuated residents of Blue River to discuss the cleanup, moving back upriver and plans to rebuild.
Emily Reiman from the not-for-profit housing organization DevNW spoke and promised resources to help the McKenzie community find housing going forwards, watch this space for updates on that. Her team is ramping up to help in this crisis so more news will come soon.
Tim Laue, President of the McKenzie CDC, donated the pizza and reiterated the advice to leave the cleanup of fire-damaged properties to the professionals for both health and financial reasons. He also restated that the CDC is in this for the long haul and is committed to working with locals from all communities up the valley to assist them in getting the help and services they need as they recover and rebuild.
There was an update on the restoration of water supplies, which is currently up to the Track, and Sean Davis gave an update on the work going on on the ground to get supplies to the relief centers and help people currently living upriver winterize their homes in the face of a difficult winter to come.
EWEB also attended and helped residents complete Property Assessment Request forms allowing EWEB to assess the potential effect of damage to people’s properties on the health of the river and water supplies to Springfield and Eugene. The CDC also handed out the Lane County Sheriffs’s Trespass Consent Forms that explicitly give the Sheriff’s Dept. permission to access your property to enforce criminal trespass laws in your absence.
We also just want to remind everyone that free Covid testing is available for evacuees in the car park at the Lane Events center until Friday this week, so if you want a test check it out. We had ours, which involved a quick nose swab and a friendly chat with volunteers. Results expected within a week.
