Living in Limbo Along the McKenzie
On their 25th wedding anniversary in September 2020, Andrew and Sarita Carrino woke up without a home.
Around midnight the day before, Andrew Carrino stood at the top of his driveway watching the flashing lights of police cars as they passed by in the McKenzie River Valley east of Eugene, Oregon. He waved in hopes of getting the officers’ attention, but the cars kept moving.
The police were heading towards the nearby settlement of Blue River to begin evacuating residents from an oncoming wildfire. After the cars went by, Andrew turned around to see a wall of flames on a nearby forested hillside heading directly towards his own home.
Meanwhile, his wife Sarita Inch-Carrino, unaware of the fire, picked up her phone to see a text from her daughter-in-law asking if they had evacuated. While trying to decipher the text message, Sarita peered out the window to see the onrushing flames for herself.
Andrew and Sarita reunited at their home’s front door only long enough to create a makeshift evacuation plan. Andrew ran next door to his mother’s home and banged on the locked front door until she woke up. Sarita packed their dog, Nessie, and parrot, Parker, into the car.
Within minutes, Andrew, Sarita, and his mother, Alexis Johnson, were driving west towards Eugene in a three-car caravan to escape the fire. The clouds of smoke surrounding them seemed endless, and cascades of burning embers dropped onto the cars from the canopy of trees above.
Within minutes, Andrew, Sarita, and his mother, Alexis Johnson, were driving west towards Eugene in a three-car caravan to escape the fire. The clouds of smoke surrounding them seemed endless, and cascades of burning embers dropped onto the cars from the canopy of trees above.
“When we left that night, I figured we were coming back and everything would still be here,” Andrew said. That wasn’t the case.
They didn’t know right then that the flames that night would consume not only their home but also the next year and a half of their lives.
For Sarita, the months after the 2020 Holiday Farm fire were filled with doubt and heartache. She said that seeing the scorched landscape surrounding their home left her feeling paralyzed. She has battled her grief in search of hope, and in recent months she’s found optimism in the renewed growth of the forest.
They were not alone. The Holiday Farm Fire of September 7, 2020, burned more than 173,000 acres, destroyed more than 450 homes, and left hundreds of people without their houses. This is the story of Andrew and Sarita’s long, slow, anguishing process of rebuilding their home after they lost everything to fire on the night before their 25th wedding anniversary.
Andrew and Sarita have called this RV home since 2020, and Andrew’s heavy workload since the fire has taken a toll on his body. Andrew already suffers from constant pain in his shoulders and hands, and he lost part of a leg in an accident when he was a child. “The pain I go through every day is excruciating. Something that would have taken me 15 to 20 minutes years ago might take me two or three days now,” Andrew said
Andrew and Sarita Carrino have been living in limbo for more than a year and a half since the Holiday Farm fire. Burned out of their home, living in a van and recreational vehicle in the interim, their quarters have been tight. They share space with their two dogs, Nessie and Dakota, and parrot, Parker.
Living alongside a river like the McKenzie was their lifelong dream, the couple saw it as a perfect place to retire. Since the fire, Andrew has spent long days toiling in his shed turned into a workshop. “The fire was a bad dream. The rebuild has been a nightmare,” Andrew said as he referenced the bureaucratic permit process involved in rebuilding his home.
Sarita has spent most of her life around the McKenzie River ever since her father brought her here as a young child. Sarita returned to this land more than a month after the 2020 fire. “I was utterly devastated. I was grieving hard for a long time. For 16 months, almost to the day, never a day went by that I didn’t cry,” Sarita said.
While Andrew has been working hard during the difficult months of rebuilding, Sarita has struggled with whether to stay in Blue River. “I’ve wanted to leave more than I wanted to stay,” she said, but has lately become more optimistic about staying here.
Sarita says of Andrew, “He’s just a ‘fix-it’ guy. That’s what he does. If something is broken, he fixes it.”
More than a year and a half after the Holiday Farm fire, Andrew and Sarita’s new home was delivered to their property on the banks of the McKenzie River. Much work remains to make the prefabricated house habitable.
The Carrino’s new home arrived this spring in two pieces. And while its delivery marks the end of the battle to prepare the land for its arrival, this marks the beginning of another battle, to make the house habitable. “I’m not very excited yet. Every step forwards is two steps back,” Andrew said. ”It looks like we’re going forward, but it’s still a lot of work to do.”
Assembly, cleanup, and dealing with permits now occupy Andrew and Sarita as they prepare their new home for occupancy. It may be months before they can move in.
With burned McKenzie River Valley hillsides looming nearby, Andrew finishes connecting the two parts of their new home. While they will be living in their new house in a matter of months, it will be many years before the fire-damaged landscape recovers its former beauty. Andrew says living a rural lifestyle in a place like Blue River is invaluable. “I know that it’s been challenging. But, you know, at the end of the day, this is where I get to be. And to me, that’s worth it,” Andrew said.
