Note: In addition to what is written below, I’ve written two blog posts regarding the Almeda fire, which are here and here. Prior to becoming mayor, I was honored to serve as a member and then as a Council Liaison to the Wildfire Safety Commission. That commission is now a Management Advisory Committee and its members are currently working with staff to update our Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

What We Need: Hardening structures has been shown to be the most effective way to protect homes when wildfire comes to town. We must expand the good work being done at the City to help residents do the work necessary to prevent their homes from igniting during a wildfire and ensure that Ashland Fire & Rescue has enough funding to do what we need them to do.

What we know from our experience in southern Oregon is that in the right conditions (high heat, dry landscape, windy) anything will burn - and it will burn fast. We also know that the climate crisis will continue to drive extreme fire weather and we must scale up efforts to protect our community from the increasing risk of wildfire.

This article by the Union of Concerned Scientists offers a good overview of climate change and wildfire: https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/global-warming-and-wildfire.html#.W6yBymhKiyI

Ashland has invested significantly in reducing wildfire risk to the community, and we should be proud of that foresight and effort. The Ashland Forest Resiliency Project has thinned trees and reintroduced fire through prescribed burning in Ashland’s wildland urban interface, which makes it easier to get a fire under control.

As residents, we need to remember that it is not possible to fireproof a forested watershed. That means we share personal responsibility to protect our community. The Ashland Fire Department is doing a great job helping to prepare Ashland to deal with wildfire through the FireWise program and a $3 million FEMA grant to help 1,000 of the highest risk homes in Ashland reduce that risk.

The City of Ashland passed ordinances to include the whole community in a single fire-risk zone, and address building materials and flammable vegetation in new construction and major remodels/additions.

The City developed the Wildfire Risk Assessment Program - a volunteer program that trains wildfire inspectors to offer free wildfire risk assessments to Ashland residents - and launched an effort in partnership with local realtors to engage realtors and help them understand and communicate fire risk to both buyers and sellers as a means of raising awareness of the risk of wildfire. Training programs and materials have been developed and the programs are seeing positive results.

The City was able to work with Oregon Department of Transportation to build an emergency on-ramp to I-5 if needed during an evacuation. It has also completed an Evacuation Traffic Study, divided the City into 10 evacuation zones, and conducted public education programs so that Ashlanders will Know Their Zone and know what to do in the event of an emergency.

Each spring, Ashland undertakes a wildfire preparation campaign to help residents remove dangerous vegetation and understand what they can do to reduce wildfire risk around their home. City staff continues to work to secure grants to help expand our staffing and provide for additional needs. Budget adjustments have allowed us to create a position at the City for an Emergency Coordinator who is responsible for emergency management planning and running the Emergency Operations Center during emergencies. We now also have a dedicated communications staff person who does day-to-day community engagement and will help with communications during emergencies.

Just before the pandemic, the City called on a number of residents to participate in an evacuation drill to test our local processes and command structures. It was a great learning experience and City staff incorporated that learning into our formal plans. Ongoing work is needed, but we are making progress.

The City also assisted the Ashland Chamber of Commerce in developing its Emergency Preparedness and Resilience Toolkit. I was pleased to serve on the Advisory Committee that helped the Chamber develop this important resource for local businesses.

Next Steps

Wildfire will come again to Ashland, and we must be prepared by building on all of this good work through programs that educate the community and assist landowners in addressing fire risk on their property so that we have the best chance of stopping a wildfire that gets into town before it destroys homes and businesses.

We need to remember that large fires can shoot embers out several miles ahead of the fire line. In a major fire, our dedicated local fire fighters, who we count on to be at our homes in regular situations within a matter of minutes, will not be able to respond to our calls for help.

Therefore, we must prepare ourselves, our neighborhoods, businesses, and city operations for the day when wildfire comes to our community. Doing this preparation work is how we build community resilience to this very real threat. Re-doubling our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution is how we limit the eventual extent of climate change, which is the primary force behind the increasing threat of wildfire in Ashland.