A lawsuit filed on behalf of 70 landowners in the McKenzie River Valley seeks $103 million from two public utilities, Lane Electric Cooperative and Eugene Water & Electric Board, for damages arising from the Holiday Farm Fire, one of the Labor Day conflagrations that ravaged communities around the state.
The Holiday Farm Fire destroyed 430 homes, killed one person and burned 173,393 acres. The plaintiffs contend that the two utilities failed to de-energize their power lines despite Red Flag warnings and widespread forecasts for extreme fire weather, including an historic east wind event, single-digit humidity levels and an ongoing drought.
An official cause of the fire has not been released, but the lawsuit alleges that fires were started when tree branches contacted power lines between mileposts 47 and 43.5 on Oregon 126, east of Eugene. Eyewitnesses near McKenzie Bridge, where Lane Electric Cooperative provides service, offered similar accounts to The Oregonian/OregonLive in the days after the fire.
Joe Harwood, a spokesman for the Eugene Water & Electric Board, said in an emailed statement that the lawsuit “contains claims against EWEB that are based upon a significant factual error. In fact, as designed, EWEB’s lines in the Holiday Farm area de-energized automatically several hours before the Holiday Farm Fire ignited on the evening of September 7, 2020. EWEB will continue to cooperate with any ongoing investigations of the cause of this tragic event.”
