As wildfire season amps up, officials offer guidance on how to prepare

Lane County residents can get ready now for potential evacuation orders in wildfire season.

You can sign up for information and alerts, prepare emergency supplies and become familiar with the levels of evacuation orders — all before wildfire threatens your home or business. The recent wildfire last week that charred land near Oakridge is a stark reminder that fire season is here.

Here’s a look at how Lane County officials get the word out about wildfire evacuations and what you can do to be prepared beforehand and well-informed during and after emergencies.

Preparing for evacuations 

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management recommends residents have an emergency kit with supplies to last for several days. 

Kits are best assembled in advance, with items like batteries checked and replaced when they are no longer operational.

At a minimum, kits should include water – 1 gallon per person per day, several days of nonperishable food, a battery-powered or hand crank radio, flashlight and batteries, a first-aid kit, dust masks to filter contaminated air, a can opener, maps and cellphones with chargers and a backup battery. 

Other items to consider having on hand depend on the household’s needs. They can include: prescription medications, pet food, child care supplies, and books and games for children. 

Signing up for information 

The county has different ways to get the word out about wildfire evacuation notices and other emergencies and natural disasters.

For starters, all residents can sign up at this link to get notices through Lane Alerts. People can sign up and use a landline, cellphone or email address as the contact point to get text messages, emails and recorded messages.

For people who commute for work, or own property in the potential path of a wildfire, Lane Alerts is a tool to stay abreast of evacuation notices from afar.

“We recommend that people check their account at least once a year to make sure it’s still all up to date and that the options they selected last year still work for them,” county spokesperson Devon Ashbridge said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield. 

Those messages also go out based on geography. So if you move from one part of the county to another — such as from Springfield to Oakridge — you should go into your account and update your address.

County officials have other tools to get the word out — and to reach people who don’t sign up. The county also relies upon a system that uses state-purchased phone data from private providers that is matched to the appropriate address.

“That means, in an emergency, we can draw a shape and say, ‘I need this recorded voice message to go to all these numbers associated with an address within that geographic shape,’” Ashbridge said.

The catch: Though the data includes some cellphone numbers, it’s primarily landline numbers. That’s another reason why residents should sign up for Lane Alerts, Ashbridge said.

“Not every cellphone number shows up in that, which is why subscribing to the other portion is important, especially for people that don’t have a landline,” Ashbridge said.

In a large-scale disaster, the Emergency Alert System will broadcast over radio and television stations, cable television and satellite radio and television. 

The catch: The system came decades before smartphones, and it won’t interrupt your favorite Netflix shows.

As technology has changed and people consume entertainment and news differently, emergency responders need more ways to reach people in a timely way. 

Separate from the Emergency Alert Systems, the county also has wireless emergency alerts that are more targeted. They can send messages to mobile phones during an emergency, and no sign-up is required.

Alerts can go out for wildfires, other natural disasters, local emergencies requiring an evacuation and AMBER Alerts about missing children in danger. 

Wireless emergency alerts are an imperfect tool and not a guarantee that every resident with a smartphone in an area will receive an alert. If a smartphone’s emergency alerting feature is turned off, the system won’t override that.  For information on how to change your settings, go here.

People may get notices for events that are outside their immediate area. That’s because in rural areas with uneven distribution of cell towers, it’s difficult to pinpoint an evacuation area with 100% accuracy. 

As a result, the county opts to redistribute messages so everyone — including people who may be outside an impacted area — get the messages.

“We don’t have as many cellphone towers, especially in rural areas, so it’s harder for it to be superprecise. In a real emergency, though, we will over-alert rather than under-alert,” Ashbridge said. “But that’s where the messaging and being really clear about who’s affected in the message is important.”

That’s also why people should sign up for Lane Alerts. For example, if someone owns a house in Oakridge but is working in downtown Eugene, the wireless emergency alerts are unlikely to reach their cellphones about a wildfire in their community. 

Mapping tool available

Lane County now has access to a new tool through a state contract with Genasys Inc., which creates maps sooner. The Oregon Department of Human Services contracted with the company and made it available to all counties statewide. 

The map is not something that residents need to register for separately. During the Holiday Farm Fire, the county’s mapping team was creating custom maps for each incident, meaning that maps weren’t available when initial alerts went out warning residents to be prepared for potential evacuations.

That’s changed for this fire season.

“Now our ability to have a searchable map with every alert is greatly increased,” Ashbridge said. “There may be times where it still isn’t possible, depending on how quickly we need to move or the situation, but by and large, we should have a map right away with alerts so that people can confirm for sure that it’s them that we’re talking to and what action they need to take.”

The state’s new system meshes with the statewide wildfire dashboard to produce maps of evacuation areas that can be posted online. In the past, county mapping personnel would need to create the searchable maps before they could be posted.

Three levels of evacuation notices 

The Lane County sheriff is responsible for determining evacuation areas. 

When alerts go out to evacuate, the state, including Lane County, relies upon a three-level evacuation notice system. 

Level 1, coded green, tells residents in a designated area to “be ready to evacuate.” 

In this level, residents can sign up for emergency alerts if they have not already done so and can follow local emergency services on social media for updates.

This level also is the point when you should pack and be ready to leave in case an evacuation is ordered. 

People can consider if they should leave early — or start to leave — if necessary, such as when households have people that need more time to depart. This can include families with children, people with disabilities and those lacking reliable transportation. 

Level 2, coded yellow, means “be set to evacuate.” In this level, residents should be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice, according to state guidance. 

At this point, people may not have enough time to pack up their personal items. If you or family members need more time to move, you should start to leave. 

Sgt. Tim Wallace, a spokesperson for the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, said the agency will send out deputies and search and rescue volunteers when evacuations are necessary as much as possible. Sometimes a portable loudspeaker loaded onto a vehicle will be used. 

As long as possible, the loudspeaker will travel the impacted areas with the messaging, Wallace said. 

Officials say that anyone who feels unsafe can leave without waiting for a Level 3 notice.

Level 3, coded red, means “go now!” At this point, it is not safe to remain in the evacuation area and there is no more time to gather possessions or protect your property.  Level 3 areas, when evacuated, will stay closed off to residents until officials change that designation. 

Traveling through fire-stricken regions

The system that notifies motorists about road closures in areas hit by fire is different.

Motorists can get information at tripcheck.com. Julie Denney, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the Trip Check system is essentially the public-facing side of the agency’s dispatch system. 

For some closures, but not every one, the agency will also send out notifications on the FlashAlert system, which residents can sign up for to get information about closures.

During last week’s fire near Oakridge, a couple of closure notices went out on the FlashAlert system, Denney said. 

If you’re uncertain, you should visit tripcheck.com to view closures throughout the state. 

There’s also another option: a phone call to 511. The number, toll free within Oregon, will have information about road closures and weather conditions.