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QuickTake:
The plan outlines actions to reduce the likelihood and consequences of wildfire, such as vegetation thinning, evacuation planning and public education for homeowners.
More than 60% of people who responded to a recent public survey by Eugene Springfield Fire said they do not feel prepared for wildfire.
Respondents ranked property damage and evacuation safety as their top concerns and identified vegetation management assistance as most helpful to reducing wildfire risk.
Those survey results became part of the Eugene-Springfield Community Wildfire Protection Plan, the first such plan to be developed for the metro area. The plan identifies wildfire hazards, areas of concern and outlines strategies to reduce exposure and improve preparedness.
The plan, which includes action items, complements the Lane County wildfire protection plan and emphasizes coordination across agencies and community organizations.
Firefighters presented the plan to the Eugene and Springfield city councils this week ahead of the summer wildfire season. Officials have said a warm, dry winter is set to give way to significant fire potential in Oregon this summer.
The wildfire protection plan will guide a new wildfire planning and fuels management program to provide the fire department “the correct mapping that we need to be able to truly identify where we should prioritize our actions most,” said Hannah Shafer, Eugene Springfield Fire wildfire prevention manager.
That program provides free defensible space assessments for homeowners to identify risks and actions they can take to protect their property. Defensible space is an area around a building in which vegetation and flammable landscaping has been cleared to slow the spread of fire.
Shafer said the plan improves the department’s eligibility for grant funding, which it can use to pay contractors for work identified in assessments, as well as other initiatives like a chipping program to help homeowners dispose of vegetation.
“There’s other programs that we’d like to build in the future, but really just targeting anything that we can do to make wildfire mitigation more accessible and affordable for residents,” she said.
A $150,000 Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office grant supported preparation of the plan, which was drafted by consultant Chloeta, an Oklahoma-based provider of environmental consulting and emergency management services.
According to the plan, the overall wildfire risk assessment for the Eugene-Springfield area shows the region experiences moderate to high wildfire risk, with the greatest vulnerabilities concentrated in the wildland-urban interface, where forested slopes and dense vegetation border residential development.
The plan identified 11 risk areas for assessment:
- Coburg Hills
- Eugene Airport area
- Bob Straub Parkway/Thurston Hills
- Gateway commercial area
- McKenzie River corridor
- Interstate 5 corridor to Cottage Grove
- Willamette Heights/Dorris Ranch
- Southwest Eugene hills
- Hendricks Park/Laurel Hill Valley
- Southeast Eugene hills
- Mount Pisgah
Mitigation strategies are included for each area, such as vegetation thinning, removal of small trees, prescribed fire, fuel breaks along key roads, providing information on evacuation routes and grants to fund defensible work around residences.
Springfield
For an area like Thurston Hills, where new neighborhoods are developing, priorities also include ensuring street connectivity for evacuation and firefighting response, as well as providing materials to developers on defensible space and home hardening, which involves using noncombustible materials and covering openings where embers could enter.
During a June 8 Springfield City Council meeting, Shafer said the Bob Straub Parkway and Thurston Hills area was one of the highest areas of concern due to the proximity of homes to unmanaged vegetation.
She said there are “limited buffer zones around each home, which creates a heightened risk of wildfire spread into those developed residential areas. In the right conditions, especially when there’s those east-driven winds, those can really accelerate rapid fire spread into the residential zones.”
Shafer said steep and winding roads in Thurston Hills create evacuation concerns. Priorities include creating defensible space around homes, promoting homeowner awareness and implementing fuel breaks between developments and natural areas.
Councilor Andrew Buck said he appreciated Shafer’s comments on Thurston Hills because he lives in the area and said there is a lack of understanding among neighbors about how they would evacuate during a wildfire.
“I don’t know that some of those neighborhoods out there have given significant thought and are prepared or have some sort of plan, and so anything we can do to help with that. …I think that would be good,” he said. “Because there’s some real physical barriers there, and some of those neighborhoods, there’s one entrance and exit, and if you have a hundred homes, that’s going to be a problem.”
Shafer also highlighted the Dorris Ranch/Willamette Heights area for elevated fire risk due to dense vegetation and proximity to residential areas, where she said mitigation actions include thinning underbrush that connects to tree crowns and implementing fuel breaks along key roads, in addition to defensible space for homes. She also mentioned the McKenzie River area, where she said geography and wind patterns increase fire susceptibility into Springfield.
“For this, we just would really focus on collaboration with county efforts, which they’re working on in their plan currently, to plan for mutual aid, sheltering needs and smoke incursion into the metro area, especially because a lot of folks will be evacuating down into Springfield from there,” Shafer said.
Mayor Sean VanGordon asked Shafer for the number one thing she wanted the public to take away from the plan.
“You can take the actions to make your home more wildfire-prepared,” she said.
Eugene
In a presentation to the Eugene City Council on Wednesday, June 10, Shafer highlighted Eugene’s southwest and southeast hills, Laurel Hill Valley and Hendricks Park as areas facing the greatest wildfire risk in the city.
Community members have concerns about evacuation safety and damage to their properties, and want assistance with vegetation management around their homes and any possible financial and technical support, Shafer said.
The southwest Eugene hills — with its mix of conifer and hardwood fuels, population density, access limitations and homes on steep and wooded hillsides — are at “moderate to high” risk for wildfire, she said. Mitigation priorities for the area include shaded fuel breaks along key ridgelines, access roads, multijurisdictional fuel reduction, promoting defensible space, and defensive structure hardening around homes.
“A lot of these homes have limited defensible space around them,” Shafer said. “Given the right conditions, if there’s east-driven winds, it can really accelerate the fire spread uphill.”
She said Hendricks Park, the oldest park in Eugene, faces similar risks to the southeast hills. Both regions have dense tree canopy, steep slopes and homes near heavy fuels.
Shafer said priorities for the area include selective thinning, forest thinning, brush removal, the creation of more fuel breaks along the park’s perimeter and residential zones, and performing hazardous tree assessments.
“[The park] contains a lot of mature forest vegetation that presents hazards when it’s September, October, and the fuels have been dried out for so long,” Shafer said.
In response to a question from Councilor Eliza Kashinsky, Shafer explained that Eugene doesn’t have any city code requiring residents to maintain a certain level of defensible space around their property, except for a vegetation complaint process with the city and the Fire Marshal’s Office, meaning that education and awareness is vital to Eugene’s wildfire preparedness.
“If someone makes a complaint, we can require some action be taken for under certain conditions, but other than that, there is no code that currently exists,” Shafer said.
In response to questions from Councilor Matt Keating about funding mechanisms, Shafer said Eugene Springfield Fire recently purchased a wood chipper with funding from the Community Safety Payroll Tax, which it hopes to deploy into neighborhoods to dispose of excess vegetation.
“The idea with that is to provide neighborhoods a chance to partner up and have a chipper come out, and so if they do any work on their property, and they have a lot of vegetation to dispose of that can be quite costly, and so we would provide that completely for free,” she said. “We’re starting to slowly get there, and I will say this is a newer program. By like a year from now, we’ll have more programs available for residents, and we’ll get the word out there.”
When asked about the need for greater enforcement of the city’s ban on fireworks, Eugene Springfield Fire Chief Mike Caven said the Eugene Police Department may not have the bandwidth to chase down people setting off pyrotechnics.
“I think we do need some more education with that, and also capacity is a concern,” he said. “EPD would be the ones that would have to do that, that’s not charged to the fire department to enforce, and their capacity to be able to do that is probably going to be challenging at this juncture.”
Shafer said the team has had some meetings with some south Eugene neighborhood leaders and the Hendricks Park and Laurel Hill Valley neighborhoods.
Jensina Hawkins, a co-chair of the Neighborhood Leaders Council, an umbrella organization for Eugene’s neighborhood associations, said those associations “were not notified or invited to participate in any feedback,” though some people heard about the plan through other methods.
