Wednesday, April 3, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
LAND USE: Building
codes and other tools
can help mitigation
Continued from page 3
than 40,000 structures lost
to wildfire in the last decade,
fire managers believe more
communities should con-
sider adopting regulations,
plans, and codes that reduce
wildfire risk in the WUI.
In applying land-use plan-
ning tools to reduce wildfire
risk, communities can safely
live with wildfire on the
landscape.
Land-use planning
involves better management
of the built environment,
such as subdivision design,
infrastructure layout, home
construction, and landscaping
treatments, to reduce wild-
fire risks from the unbuilt or
natural environment. These
tools of land-use planning
are diverse and often work in
tandem with other develop-
ment objectives, such as zon-
ing overlays, development
ordinances, land preservation
and watershed management
plans, and building codes.
Strategies such as fuel
breaks, landscape treatments,
development and design
standards, building codes,
subdivision regulations and
other planning tools are suc-
cessfully applied to improve
a community9s resiliency to
wildfire.
Planners and fire manag-
ers have the knowledge and
tools to reduce risk posed
by homes in wildfire-prone
areas, and that can mean the
difference between home sur-
vival and loss. These tactics
include:
" Require wildfire-resis-
tant building materials and
design features.
" Prohibit the storage of
flammable materials (like
firewood and propane tanks)
in areas around homes.
" Use slope setbacks to
distance homes from hills
where fires move quickly.
" Reduce or regulate new
home development in the
areas of highest risk.
" Develop approved plant
lists and require homeown-
ers to maintain vegetation
around the home.
" Maintain parks and open
space around a community to
reduce fuel.
The costs of such strate-
gies are often minor, and cer-
tainly they pale in compari-
son to the costs communities
suffer when they experience
a wildfire disaster. With thou-
sands of U.S. communities at
risk, wildfire mitigations for
communities are an immedi-
ately available 4 but under-
used 4 solution.
Oregon is making prog-
ress. Earlier this year, Oregon
amended its State Building
Code to allow local jurisdic-
tions the option of requiring
wildfire-resistant construc-
tion in high hazard areas. The
code, derived from interna-
tional standards and using the
best available science, allows
cities and counties to decide
whether and where to imple-
ment wildfire building regu-
lations. Deschutes County
and the City of Sisters now
have the opportunity to adopt
this code. In addition, find-
ings from a recent third-party
study (CPAW) on how land-
use codes and policies are
in line with current wildfire
mitigation standards, have
provided recommendations
on changes the City of Sisters
can adopt.
These can help guide
future growth in a way that
allows the protection of our
community in areas where
wildfires are accepted as nat-
urally occurring events that
we cannot always control.
We are wise to allow com-
munities to require wildfire-
resistant construction, as
Washington and California
have already done. To be
most effective, mitigation
must be mandatory at the
community scale in areas of
high wildfire hazard. Since
implementation takes time,
the sooner Deschutes County
and the City of Sisters adopt
these codes and recommen-
dations, the better.
Too often, we believe the
unthinkable will not happen
to our community, but such
willful blindness does us all a
disservice. When flammable
homes are built in wildfire-
prone areas without appro-
priate mitigation efforts, tax-
payers end up shouldering
the burden, economies are
disrupted, and individuals
suffer.
Doug Green is Fire
Safety Manager for the
Sisters -Camp Sherman Fire
District.
YOU
ODAY FOR
T
L
L
A
C
R
IN O
Sisters Country birds
By Douglas Beall
Correspondent
Arriving at ponds and
lakes near you are the color-
rich northern shovelors (spat-
ula clypeata), a dabbling duck
who will often form a group
circle and agitate the water
to bring seeds and aquatic
plants to the surface for a
quick meal. Males have a
dark green head, orange legs,
yellow eyes and a chestnut
breast. Females are a mottled
light brown with orange-
brown bill and legs, and dark
eyes.
The northern shovelors
are often called <spoonys=
because of the shape of their
bills, which have 110 lamellae
(fine projections) on the sides,
for straining food from water.
They produce one brood a
year of 8-12 pale-greenish
eggs laid in a nest built by the
female using vegetation and
lined with downy feathers.
In 22-25 days the ducklings
break through their egg shells
and are fully feathered and
ready to jump in the water.
The oldest northern shovelor
recorded was a male, 16 years
7 months, in Nevada.
Ducks are referred to as a
<flush,= <paddling,= <team,=
<brace,= or <raft= of ducks. To
see more images visit http://
abirdsingsbecauseithasasong.
com/recent-journeys.
The color-rich
northern shovelor.
PHOTO BY DOUGLAS BEALL
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