He said state officials have plenty of federal money to immediately provide free hotels rooms or apartments to every family displaced from their homes.
Walden, a Republican from Hood River, represents most of eastern and southern Oregon, including the fire-decimated communities of Phoenix and Talent.
In a conference call with the press Wednesday morning, he encouraged anyone “adversely affected” by the wildfires to register with the federal agency by calling 1-800-621-3362 or going online to DisasterAssistance.gov.
“The sooner they do that the sooner they’re in the queue and can move forward,” he said. “Then FEMA will reach out and begin providing assistance.”
Walden said he’s “pleased the president moved so rapidly to approve the governor’s request for an emergency declaration of this magnitude,” freeing up resources for those affected.
He added the state has a housing plan for those who lost homes to the fires. People should call 2-1-1 to get free housing. But he said registering with FEMA is key.
FEMA, with the help of state officials, has identified and catalogued available housing in the state, including hotel rooms and apartments. “They have that list, so going through FEMA is the best way to get access to housing,” Walden said.
But he noted that the supply of available housing will be tight in some areas, particularly Southern Oregon.
In the Phoenix and Talent areas, about 2,700 homes were destroyed. Just 400 new housing units were built in all of Jackson County in 2019, Walden said. Now families need almost seven times that many new homes.
The congressman said he’s heard that a rumor is circulating about housing vouchers being necessary to access temporary housing.
“There’s no such thing as housing vouchers,” he said. “This is all taken care of without that [when people register with FEMA].”
“The money is there,” he added. “No one should be sleeping in their car. … Lack of resources is not an issue.”
Walden expects the federal response will be swift and significant thanks to President Donald Trump’s major disaster declaration on Tuesday. He says the U.S Army Corps of Engineers is already on the scene.
“You’ll see an increased presence” of federal disaster-assistance personnel in the state, he said.
Walden joined U.S. senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden and fellow U.S representatives Peter DeFazio, Earl Blumenauer, Kurt Schrader and Suzanne Bonamici in a statement Wednesday morning announcing the disaster declaration.
“The damage from the wildfires across Oregon is catastrophic, and the scale of the recovery is beyond the capabilities of the state,” DeFazio, a Democrat from Lane County, said in the statement. “I’m grateful for the White House’s swift action in declaring a major disaster.”
Merkley, also a Democrat, added that he had driven “over 600 miles from Portland to Medford and back -- meeting with first responders, talking to people who have suffered terrible loss, witnessing unimaginable devastation. It’s clear that our state is going to need an unprecedented amount of support in our response and recovery.”
In his virtual press conference, Walden said he has visited the southern Oregon towns of Phoenix and Talent and seen the burned-out buildings, the lots with nothing left standing, the mobile homes reduced essentially to cinders.
“I think people are still in a state of shock and disbelief,” he said. “The fire was so hot and vicious. There’s not a lot left behind.”
He added that, during a meeting Wednesday morning with FEMA officials, he recommended that they “come down to southern Oregon” in particular, given the scale of home losses there.
“People are going to be displaced for some time,” he acknowledged.
“The good news,” he added, “is this [federal assistance] system will start to work right away now that we have the national disaster [declaration] in place.”
-- Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
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