8 Summer 2015 Applegater
Making rural residential
areas fire resilient
by bRIAN bALLOU
Wildfires strike rural residential
areas in Jackson and Josephine counties
every year, and every year homes and
outbuildings are threatened and some are
destroyed.
T h e n u m b e r o n e way f o r
landowners to ensure their homes and
outbuildings will survive a wildfire is to
take action before summer to reduce the
amount of flammable vegetation around
their structures.
This is not new information to many
long-term residents in southwestern
Oregon, and many people have taken
the measures necessary to make their
structures defensible against wildfire. State
and county laws have detailed instructions
about what kind of vegetation to cut and
how big a fuel break must be around
homes and other structures. In many areas,
landowners are banding together with
their neighbors to take community action
toward wildfire protection. This latter
scenario holds more promise since it reflects
the adoption of an attitude to take action
against a very solvable problem.
A new program, called Fire
Adapted Communities, strives to not
only provide information about protecting
structures and wildland landscapes against
wildfire damage, but also instills the will
among residents to take ownership of the
problem—and the solutions. Following a
checklist to meet state or county fuel-break
regulations can reduce the threat of wildfire
damage, but the beneficial effects are
short-lived. Adopting wildfire-protection
principles and practices as a necessary fact
of life results in structures and landscapes
that are continuously resilient against
wildfire.
Making a fire-adapted
c o m m u n i t y c o m p r i s e s m a ny
elements. Structures need to have fire-
intensitY level
from page 1
much of March due to “unsafe” fire or
weather conditions. Private landowners
and professional fuels folks alike are hard-
pressed to find enough days to get our slash
piles burned.
Australia has seen some
wicked weather! In 2013 temperatures
were 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees
Fahrenheit!) for over a week when their
“bush” fires broke out. In October alone
they had 627 fires within a two-week
period, burning 405,000 acres!
Last year’s Washington State
Carlton Complex (in July) started with
an extraordinary lightning storm: 2,500
strikes with a 50 percent ignition rate
(10 to 15 percent ignition is more the
average). Within days, erratic 45-mile-per-
hour winds had blown four fires in four
different communities out of control. One
run burned 123,000 acres in nine hours!
(The size of that area is one-third larger
than the city of Portland.) All firefighters
could do was try to move the fires around
homes. In the end, over 300 homes and
a lot of community infrastructure were
destroyed. What I found interesting was
that the damage was so widespread that
there was no power to surviving homes
for nearly a month after the fires were
out! This seriously hampered post-fire
communications and rehabilitation.
I also heard the fire chief from Twain
Harte, California, say that recently they
have been replacing their “worst historical
fire” on an annual basis. Their Rim Fire last
year sent smoke all the way to Salt Lake
City! So, wildfires are not just a “local”
problem.
Everyone in Reno was using the term
“situational awareness” when discussing the
wildfire picture. The whole western region
of the country seems to be in the same boat
regarding weather and drought, wildfire
and wildland-urban interface conditions.
As one speaker said, “This isn’t going away,
so we have to get our head around it.”
The other disturbing message
I heard in Reno was that residents in
several of these severe fires were “waiting
to be told” to evacuate. They didn’t take
the initiative themselves. Many others
were unaware of the danger approaching.
While I didn’t hear that any lives were lost,
the concept that urban interface residents
are not aware of smoke, fire, lightning or
severe weather in their area and how it
might affect their property (or their life?)
is astounding, and scary.
Are we like that here in the
Applegate? I like to think not, but I also
wouldn’t want to have to test the theory.
We are in wildfire country. We need to
address our own property’s fire risks by
reducing fuels on and around our homes
and access routes. We need to develop,
agree to, and practice implementing a
family evacuation plan, including pets
and/or livestock. No one else is going to
do this for us.
We need to pay attention to
weather and fire danger, because Mother
Nature is often unpredictable, moving at
her own schedule and intensity. In severe
weather, phones and social media might
not be operable. You may not get that reverse
911 call!
Mother Nature doesn’t use social
media and neither should we when
it comes to possible life- or property-
threatening fire weather. Develop and
maintain your own “situational awareness”
by being prepared and alert.
This is our valley, our home, and our
responsibility.
Sandy Shaffer
sassyoneor@q.com
Note: If you would like free information
regarding defensible space, fuels reduction,
or evacuation planning, call the Applegate
Fire District (541-899-1050), the Oregon
Department of Forestry (Jackson County:
541-664-3328; Josephine County: 541-474-
3152), or your local fire district.
Burn reminder
Before burning outdoors any time of year,
check with your fire district to make sure
that day is an official burn day
and not a NO burn day.
Jackson County • 541-776-7007
Josephine County • 541-476-9663 (Press 3)
resistant roofing, such as asphalt shingles or
metal. Flammable landscaping plants, like
juniper and cypress, shouldn’t be growing
near windows or tucked under roof eaves.
The landscape around a home shouldn’t
have dead vegetation or thickets of highly
flammable brush, primarily thickets of
blackberry and manzanita. Tall, dry grass
around structures and along the roadside
and property lines should be mowed before
fire danger becomes extreme. An address
sign for the home should be at the foot of
the driveway, and the driveway itself must
be passable for fire trucks. A clear escape
route should be part of the escape plan for
every resident.
Southwest Oregon is a fire
environment. It is impossible to exclude
wildfire from the landscape. In fact, by
trying to exclude fire from the landscape
for so many years, the problem has become
worse. Where there were once many
grass and oak woodlands, there are now
brushfields and overgrown conifer forests.
It is within these overgrown wildland areas
that thousands of homes now stand.
Residents need to make every
effort to not cause a wildfire. Making the
effort to keep homes, outbuildings, and
private lands less vulnerable to wildfire
year after year is a practical step toward
accepting ownership of the solution.
Fire departments and wildfire protection
agencies will always be there to do whatever
is possible to save lives and property from
fire. But working together—fire protection
professionals and landowners—will ensure
a long-term favorable outcome when the
inevitable strikes.
For more information about Fire
Adapted Communities, contact the
Applegate Valley Fire District’s office at
541-899-1050, the Oregon Department
of Forestry at 541-664-3328, or online at
www.fireadapted.org.
And don’t forget that classes
are available through the Oregon State
University Extension Service in Jackson
and Josephine counties to help landowners
learn strategies to not only protect their
lands against wildfire, but also improve
forest health, exclude invasive plants, and
protect soil, air and water resources.
Brian Ballou
541-664-3328
Oregon Department of Forestry
Ruch School students create
firewise demonstration sites
and learn how to be fire adapted
The Applegate Valley Fire District,
the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration
Collaborative, the Bureau of Land
Management, and Ruch School sixth-
and seventh-grade students came together
to assess Ruch School for potential fire
hazards before fire season begins.
Students learned about fire
science, fire behavior, fire-adapted
ecosystems and communities, and the
three zones that make up a defensible
space. They put what they learned into
practice by assessing their own school,
helping build firewise demonstration sites,
planting fire-resistant plants, and clearing
fuels on the school grounds. Students then
went to their own homes to assess them for
potential fire hazards.
In addition, students nominated
vulnerable members of the community to
receive assistance from Oregon Department
of Forestry crews to do fuel-reduction work
around their homes.
The project was funded by a
$500 firewise grant offered by the National
Fire Protection Association and sponsored
by State Farm Insurance. The Plant Oregon
nursery and community members donated
plants, and Advanced Landscape Services
donated mulch.
This project integrates fire science
and safety on school grounds to be used
for educational purposes for years to
come and brings community awareness
about defensible space and the need to
be prepared for the upcoming fire season.
Community members are encouraged
to stop by Ruch School to see what the
students have created.
For more information on creating a
defensible space around your home, please
stop by the Applegate Fire District Office
at 18489 North Applegate Road or call
Carey Chaput at 541-899-1050.
— See more articles online —
www.applegater.org
• Annual Children’s Festival, July 11 to 13, at
Britt Gardens, Jacksonville
• “First graders become published authors at
Ruch Community School” by Curtis Mekemson
• Lavender Trail, June 26 to 28: “Lavender is a
‘blooming’ business in the Applegate Valley”
