Near city limits, people live in a new fire norm

A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled the last name of Dan Moisan. Lookout Eugene-Springfield regrets the error.

They live in a bubble. 

Faced with increasing fire danger a few miles south of Eugene in Peaceful Valley, Karen Perkins and David Simone designed a sprinkler system that creates a dome of humidity around their cedar-sided home. 

When activated, a gas-powered pump on the hill above their 8-acre property draws from three storage tanks holding 6,500 gallons of water, feeding it into a network of nozzles that spray and spin. These “schnozzles” — as Perkins calls them — serve different purposes. Some spout water 50 feet outward, while others spray into the eaves that have been closed off by cement boards.

“It’s just like you’re in this huge rainstorm. It feels like you’re just getting dumped on,” Perkins said. 

Their hope is that windblown embers can’t catch onto a saturated house. Meanwhile, the mist would become a buffer, and trees would release moisture as temperatures warm, her husband, Simone explained. He modeled the setup after one in Minnesota that helped save more than 100 homes during a wildfire.

“So, if the fire comes, it’s going to push against the humidity,” said Simone. “It’s going to try and go around. That is the humidity bubble.” 

While wildfire risk can’t be engineered away, Simone believes the humidity bubble gives their property a fighting chance alongside years of other hard work. 

Tree trimming. Pulling weeds. Retrofitting gutters. 

It’s all part of building a wildfire defense, a process that takes time, money and a hyper-local understanding of what must be adapted to survive in a changing climate.

As a regional push for fire resilience grows — especially in urban areas that haven’t faced this threat before — so too do collaborative efforts to help people prepare before ignition occurs.

During a recent community meeting, at the Spencer Creek Grange Hall, Perkins shared that she, too, was once overwhelmed about where to start. And it wasn’t with the sprinklers on her roof, but with the low-lying plants at her feet. 

Keeping mice-like embers out 

About 30 people squeezed onto wooden benches, facing a small projected presentation from the Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State Fire Marshal. 

At the front of the hall, Kelsey Hunter, a fire risk reduction specialist with the Oregon State Fire Marshal, stood beside a map of a house, its perimeter marked with a series of contour-like lines. Except they weren’t marking topography, but how fire may behave based on how far it starts from the home.

She explained the home ignition zone — commonly shortened to the slangy acronym, the HIZ — and that the first 5 feet is the most critical piece of defensible space. That term describes the immediate area around a home kept clear of vegetation, like plants and trees. It also means considering how wind can shower embers, drifting from as far as a mile away, into openings and weak spots.

“Embers are going to act like mice. They’re going to find the vulnerability in and around your home to get in,” she said. “Vents under crawl spaces, vents into your attics. These are great places to come into. How do you prevent them? You screen them off.” 

Decades of research through the National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise program have provided a science-based framework to guide people from that first 5 feet surrounding the home — into the intermediate zone (5 to 30 feet) and the extended zone (30 to 100 feet).

It’s a concept that’s been applied since the 1990s and incorporated into state-level defensible space programs, like providing access to experts who can walk people through an assessment of their property.

What’s new is the concept’s growing shift into urban areas, where extended zones around a home often overlap with neighboring properties. 

Becoming ‘fire wise’ within city limits 

That’s the case for Cynthia Orlando, once a certified arborist who recently retired from the Oregon Department of Forestry after 15 years. She’s now working to create a Firewise community south of the Wayne Morse Family Farm within Eugene city limits — a designation that opens the door to funding and regional collaboration.

“I worked through many fire seasons,” she said. “During summertime, I would think about the south hills and hope folks were taking fire prevention measures.”

Oregon has long been a fire-prone landscape. But in recent decades, climate change has intensified conditions, turning what was once a regular ecological process in the southern Willamette Valley into destructive wildfire events.

Adding to the risk are a growing population and development in wildland areas, many of which are overgrown due to decades of federal land policies that in part removed fire as a natural element by aggressively suppressing it. In the south hills, forested patches between properties can ignite like a tinderbox. Keeping the area livable is a shared responsibility between government agencies and residents.

With that in mind, Orlando began work last summer, doing what was within her means alongside neighbors — hauling leaves and branches, clearing blackberry bushes and removing debris from beneath decks. “It all adds up,” Orlando said. 

She’s officially submitted the application, a step in the process, toward becoming a Firewise community. 

The paperwork can be a heavy lift, said McKenna Armantrout, a community wildfire forester for the Western Lane District of the Oregon Department of Forestry. A large part of her job is helping residents navigate the administrative process and respond to the various wake-up calls around them.

So far, areas within city limits have largely been spared — more by luck than planning. Leaders often point to the Holiday Farm Fire as an example, when strong winds pushed flames over mountain ridges but changed direction before the flames crawled into Springfield.

Armantrout added that fires in urban areas, like those in Los Angeles earlier this year, are another stark warning of what’s possible.

“Even within those city limits in more congested areas, something could still happen,” she said. “So it’s always smart to just still be taking actions and doing activities that might reduce the risk of a home igniting.”

Each Firewise site is uniquely shaped by its landscape and the people who live there. That variability is reflected in how different agencies approach Firewise resources. Lane County, for example, offers its own grant program for rural property owners, while the Oregon Department of Forestry assigns specialists by region to address distinct local challenges.

That includes Armantrout, who worked with Perkins on establishing a Firewise community in Upper Laughlin, the sixth of its kind on the outskirts of Eugene. The site in the south hills will be the second within city limits.

“Some of their actions [in the south hills] will look a little bit different than the Firewise community in Upper Laughlin,” Armantrout said. “Karen is constantly just educating her neighbors, and in contact with them on the activities they can do.”

Taking matters into their own hands 

One of those neighbors is Dan Moisan, who lives on a classic Firewise property — open space carved into the thick of a forest.

Moisan jokingly calls it his little golf course. While he brings humor to it, the work is serious. He’s cut down more than 100 trees, most of them dead, and replaced dense growth with wide, maintained clearings. He’s also upgraded his home with cement-board siding and an asphalt roof. 

As a former landscaping contractor, he says he enjoys the work and has the means to hire help — though he knows that’s a barrier for others without the time, money or interest. It’s part of why he and Perkins share what they’ve learned with others.

And in Moisan’s view, taking matters into his own hands was unavoidable. He moved from California to escape the wildfire threat, only to find himself confronting the same smoke-filled skies in Oregon.

“It’s an eye-opener. I try and seek refuge here and then go into the same problem,” Moisan said. 

Perkins has watched it unfold for decades, visible in the drought-stricken trees that first drew her and her husband to the land — a different kind of bubble than the one they recently built. This one was quiet, isolated. 

“Most of us didn’t move out here to work in committees,” she said. “People tend to be resistant in the beginning, because we’re all living in the country. We want to do our thing.

“But we also need to come together with each other in terms of understanding that whatever we do, it does impact other people.”