Wildfire damage and timber struggles spur government distrust in the 5th Congressional District’s reddest region

Editor’s note: This is the second story in a three-part series on Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. View Part 1 here. View Part 3 here.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Stay informed with OPB on the presidential race, key congressional battles and other local contests and ballot measures in Oregon and Southwest Washington at opb.org/elections.

Four years have passed since the Beachie Creek fire, and the main drag through the small town of Detroit remains largely empty. Residents share beers and burgers at one of the few gathering places in town, a food truck and a bar near Highway 22. They chat over the noise of a tractor as the city continues to rebuild.

“I think the community, it’s changed so much,” said Kathy Snyder, a longtime resident retired from a career owning a business and delivering mail. “There’s mostly not a lot of the local people that are here anymore.”

After the fire, the only thing left of Snyder’s home was a metal roof. She tried to get support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the government would only cover $234 in damages, she said. Since then, she says some longtime locals who struggled to rebuild have left town, their homes replaced by upscale multi-story houses.

“Normally you’d go to the post office, and you’d see friends,” Snyder said. “I can walk down the street and may not know anybody that I see. I may not know who it is, which is really a big change from what it once was.”

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In the razor-thin race for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, candidates are campaigning here in the Santiam Canyon, a Republican stronghold scarred by catastrophic wildfire, and a place where government distrust runs deep. Rural towns were already struggling with the decline of the timber industry, and now they’re recovering from wildfire too. Residents and local officials say progress has been painfully slow, deepening resentment toward the government.

“The teachers lived here, there was a school here, logging went on, and it was slowly changing,” Snyder said. “But this fire is what actually made the big change.”

The Santiam Canyon curves high into the Cascade Mountains in Marion County, the district’s only area where Republicans outnumber Democrats and nonaffiliated voters. Along with neighboring Linn County, this is where U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer dominated in 2022, earning more than twice as many votes as Democratic nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner. She flipped the district for Republicans.

Now Chavez-DeRemer faces Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum in a race that could decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. But in small towns throughout the canyon, some say the government doesn’t look out for them the way the community looks out for itself.

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“Detroit is one of those neighborhoods where you know everybody, everybody knows you,” said Dean O’Donnell, the former owner of Mountain High Grocery, who lost his home in the 2020 wildfires.

The town of Detroit sits upriver from a large dam and beside Detroit Lake, a vacation spot each summer for thousands of Oregonians who come to boat, fish and camp. And with large homes being built along the lakefront, some residents don’t like how their town is changing.

“They are renting them — short-term rentals,” said Debi Bowman, a former state parks employee and longtime resident. “Here we are with no family, no community. Just people passing through.”

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Kevin Cameron, a Marion County commissioner who lives in Detroit, said the new buildings and homes going up throughout town are a positive sign.

“We’re making really good progress,” he said.

Donald Trump and Make America Great Again signs line the highway that snakes through the canyon, where vast stretches of burned trees still cover the hillsides.

The Beachie Creek fire was among several that blew up and tore across Oregon in September 2020, making it the most destructive wildfire year in Oregon’s history at that time. Statewide, the fires burned more than 1.14 million acres, destroyed more than 4,000 homes and killed nine people.

“That fire burned for a long time before that wind kicked up and sent it out of control,” said O’Donnell.

In O’Donnell’s view, former Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, was more concerned with the COVID-19 pandemic than addressing the wildfires — until it was too late.

“The fires were not as important to her as it was to us,” O’Donnell said.

Republican state Sen. Fred Girod lost his home.

“You’re trying to help people that totally lost everything they had,” Girod said.

Here, it’s easy to find patches of dirt where there used to be buildings and homes. Girod says state and federal rules intended to preserve the health of local waterways have inadvertently made it harder for towns to rebuild. That includes communities such as Gates, Detroit and Idanha, which don’t have sewer systems.

Girod says the Legislature has taken key steps by protecting survivors from property tax increases after they rebuild and by ensuring that the state doesn’t take a portion of the money that survivors win through lawsuits.

Still, Girod says many people in his district remain frustrated over the federal government’s response to the fires, and they feel environmental policies have harmed the area’s timber economy.

“The guy that’s on the dome of the capitol, he has an ax in his hands,” Girod said. “He’s a timber guy. Our history has been that way, but you have extremes up in Portland. They have their heads where it shouldn’t be, let’s put it that way.”

But Girod praised Chavez-DeRemer, saying the first-term representative has supported the area’s timber and agriculture industries while balancing the needs of a politically diverse district.

“I think Chavez-DeRemer has done as well as you’re going to do,” Girod said.

One of the region’s main employers, Freres Wood, is in Lyons, west of Detroit. More than 430 employees work for the company. In 2019, Lara Trump and then-President Trump’s campaign manager visited the company, and on a recent day, a book called “The MAGA Doctrine” sat on a table in the lobby.

“We feel like the state’s going in the wrong direction,” said company president Rob Freres. He added, “Our state government is controlled by urban interests and public employee unions in particular. They really don’t have much sympathy or support for rural Oregon.”

Freres says that, lately, business has been rocky. He blames inflation, government regulations and new rules like the state’s paid leave law, a program that aims to support Oregonians having children, caring for a serious health condition or recovering from certain crimes. Freres says the timber industry’s years-long struggles have hurt rural communities.

“We see all the social ills of broken homes and [people] unable to make mortgages and losing homes and alcohol abuse and drug abuse,” Freres said. “It’s really a tragic situation.”

At least seven timber mills like this have closed in Oregon this year alone.

It’s likely that Chavez-DeRemer will dominate in the Santiam Canyon again this November. The only question is by how much, and whether it will make the difference needed to beat Bynum district-wide.