Wildfire planning manager meets with neighborhoods, councilors

Presenter: If you’d like your neighborhood to learn more about wildfire protection, contact Eugene’s manager of wildfire planning and fuels management. She was out and about at the Neighborhood Leaders Council June 23.

Hannah Shafer: I’m Hannah Shafer, I’m the Eugene Springfield Fire wildfire planning and fuels management manager. I just wanted to come here and introduce myself. I know some people are aware of the new wildfire program and the community protection plan.

Just wanted to introduce myself, and show up in person to meet you all. I’m looking to become more engaged in neighborhoods here.

The Community Protection Plan that was recently released is on our website, Eugene Springfield Fire’s wildfire preparedness website. So if you just Google that, it should pop up. It’d be great to have you all take a look at that and give your feedback.

The protection plan is a living document and it provides an action plan for Eugene and Springfield for the next five years.  And so as we’re working through fire season and trying to become more prepared, I just encourage you all to look through that.

And I’m happy to always attend any meetings, give any presentations on anything wildfire preparedness-related.

Presenter: At the City Council June 10, Hannah Shafer:

Hannah Shafer: The Community Wildfire Protection Plan began with the passage of the Federal Healthy Forest Restoration Act in 2003. These establish a locally-driven framework to reduce wildfire risk and protect lives and strengthen overall community resilience.

So communities that develop a CWPP and adopt one are then eligible for federal funds and state funds. Each plan must identify wildfire hazards in the local context, areas of concern, and outline strategies to reduce fire risk in coordination with other agencies.

And then getting into community engagement. We started out with a public survey that ran from December throughout January of this year. We didn’t get as many responses as we had initially hoped. We ended up out with, I think around 85 total responses there. Those survey results did find that more than 60% of respondents feel unprepared for a wildfire event in the area.

But respondents in the Eugene area identified that the South Hills, the Southwest Hills, and the Laurel Hill Valley areas are facing the greatest wildfire risk in Eugene. And their priority concerns are evacuation safety and damage to their properties. 

They showed strong interest in getting assistance with vegetation management around their homes and any financial and technical support.

And as part of Wildfire Awareness Month in May, we partnered with Northwest Youth Corps and offered two free woody debris drop sites, one in Eugene and one in Springfield. 

We hope to meet with neighborhood association groups and leaders to attend any of their meetings and be included in any of their newsletters, and hear any feedback that they have.

We’ll be attending various Firewise events in the area. We will be attending Lane County Fair throughout that entire week, and we’ll continue with defensible space assessment interactions and talking about the plan for people to be aware.

Presenter: The plan includes a detailed risk assessment. Hannah Shafer:

Hannah Shafer: We used a layered approach of multiple data sets to create one comprehensive map to show where mitigation will be the most effective. 

The urban core is generally low risk. And then when you kind of get to the outskirts of both Eugene and Springfield and to the WUI (wildland-urban interface) areas, we see some of the greater vulnerabilities, and it’s rated moderate to high wildfire risk in those areas. 

I wanted to highlight the Southwest Eugene hills, which was rated moderate to high. Here we see dense vegetation and complex terrain. There’s a mix of conifer and hardwood fuels in the area. That, combined with the population density and some access limitations and how homes are built on the steep and wooded hillsides, creates a higher fire risk. 

A lot of these homes have limited defensible space around them. Given the right conditions, if there’s east-driven winds, it can really accelerate the fire spread uphill. There’s also a lot of ecologically significant natural areas and parks and trail systems in these areas as well that we want to protect.

So some mitigation priorities for that area would be shaded fuel breaks along the key ridgelines, access roads. And in the perimeter of residential neighborhoods, we would partner up and try to do some multi-jurisdictional fuel reduction because our Eugene Springfield Fire’s jurisdictional boundaries there kind of intermix with some other agencies.

And then, promoting defensible space and structure hardening around some of those homes in the area. We’d also want to educate on evacuation and start evaluating some street connectivity with any new development.

And then the Southeast Eugene hills, also steep terrain, dense vegetation, a big concentration of homes in the wildland urban interface (WUI) zone. There’s residential zones with mature trees and thick understories, and again, more minimal defensible space in the area.

And similar mitigation priorities would be: increased fuel breaks along public land boundaries, ridgelines, access routes; partnering up with agencies to tackle some fuels reduction projects; and promoting defensible space and evacuation education to residents in the area.

And then we have the Hendricks Park and Laurel Hill Valley. This is similar to the Southeast Eugene hills. We see dense tree canopy, steep slopes, proximity of residential structures next to heavy fuels. 

Hendricks Park is the oldest park in Eugene. It 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.

So the hillside homes with limited defensible space and tree cover over structures with narrow access roads creates that heightened risk.

The mitigation priorities would look similar as before: doing some selective thinning, forest thinning, reducing those ladder fuels, brush removal, creating more fuel breaks along the park’s perimeter and residential zones, doing some hazard tree assessments, and again, promoting defensible space, evacuation education, and doing some more street assessments.

We’re really looking to do more assessments, specifically on critical infrastructure corridors.

Presenter: Councilor Alan Zelenka:

Councilor Alan Zelenka: Last year in the Laurel Hill Valley, Moon Mountain had a wildfire that took off and it came down the hill, right about 100 feet or 200 feet from a group of homes, and it was quite scary. I remember standing on my property in Laurel Hill Valley on Riverview and looking at the flames going, ‘Holy cow, if this got any worse, we’d all be evacuating.’

And so the psychological impact of that was pretty tremendous on folks. I mean, I still remember it vividly. The people who were right there really remember it. And the neighborhood association in Laurel Hill Valley certainly does. 

I’m wondering about what we’re doing to address some of the reality and the perception about risk areas, because everybody’s starting to freak out about wildfires and potential fires, and especially in the South Hills, all the way from Franklin Boulevard all the way around the valley here. 

Hannah Shafer: Yeah, we are starting to see a lot more awareness around it, which is great. That can also create a big sense of fear among residents that live in the area.

And so the biggest thing is just spreading more education and awareness and again, like doing the most we can, by attending events, trying to interact with the neighborhoods.

Anytime I’m doing an assessment, I ask them to please share this out with neighbors. We hope to do more mailers and create some signage in yards that say like, ‘I had a defensible space assessment done,’ so people are driving by and they can see like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that that was an option.’

It’s really the one-on-one interaction that I can have with people that creates more awareness around their wildfire risk.

But I’m really just asking neighborhoods and communities to be involved with each other. I think that’s the best way. If someone in your neighborhood knows a lot about fire and fire risk and emergency preparedness, please, please spread the word. I think that’s the best course of action we can take right now as we continue to build up this program.

Councilor Alan Zelenka: I wasn’t at the meeting, but the fire marshal met with Laurel Hill Valley folks, and when they described it as ‘low to moderate risk,’ they were very surprised, apparently.

My Councilor-elect Jennifer Smith was there and she recounted that to me. So I think getting the information out and maybe helping calm people down a little bit would be very valuable.

Presenter: Councilor Greg Evans:

Councilor Greg Evans: Did you guys do any specific analysis on some of the flatlands, like, talking about West Eugene, Northwest Eugene? 

I’ll note that last year, we had a brush fire in West Eugene that could have turned into something pretty ugly if we hadn’t have gotten to it as quickly as we did. There was a potential that, you know, our neighborhood over in Bethel could have gone up in flames pretty fast. 

And I’m concerned about us having a more comprehensive plan and strategy that covers the most exposed areas like the Southwest Hills and the South Hills, but also looking at potentials in the flatlands where wildfire can spread pretty quickly. 

Hannah Shafer: I did only focus on the higher-risk areas of the plan, just for time’s sake of the presentation, but it does cover the entire area of Eugene Springfield. So for those areas it was rated, I think mostly ‘Low.’

And that’s just due to some of the vegetation and proximity to homes and terrain and slopes that it was rated the low risk. But it does cover all of that. And I will say there’s, it’s low, it’s never zero. So there’s not a 0% chance that something will occur in that area.

Presenter: She explained that she is talking to neighborhoods because the city can support fuels reduction work, and can provide the neighborhood with a wood chipper. 

Hannah Shafer: We have the Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Grant funds available now for homeowners for us to hire a contractor to do fuels reduction work on their properties, or do any other projects in the higher risk areas.

And so we’re doing assessments and working to see where we can use those funds to do work on properties.

We recently did purchase a chipper with the Community Safety Payroll Tax funds. And so 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.

Presenter: She also described upcoming work. Wildfire Planning and Fuels Management Manager Hannah Shafer:

Hannah Shafer: We’re looking to create updated evacuation route maps and some more signage for those wildland urban interface (WUI) areas. And then designate and equip temporary evacuation centers with defensible space and backup power.

I know there’s been a lot of discussion around resiliency centers with the city and county as people are evacuating to the area from the Upper McKenzie. This would be a good opportunity to incorporate some of that work.

The Oregon State Fire Marshal has a model code available for defensible space and home hardening for local jurisdictions to adopt. And so we hope to engage local stakeholders, and do a review process to see what recommendations we would make for adopting some of that code for Eugene and Springfield, specifically for new development.

And then looking at some of the wildland urban interface areas and seeing if there’s any defensible space codes we could possibly implement to make those areas safer.

And then by the end of 2027, implement a standardized process to distribute defensible space and home hardening guidance to applicable residential permit applicants. So anyone that’s applying for any residential construction or development would receive materials. And there’s no enforcement there, it’s all educational for them.

And so, we’re starting to slowly get there and I will say this is a newer program and I hope by, like, a year from now we’ll have more programs available for residents and we’ll get the word out there.

Presenter: Councilor Eliza Kashinsky:

Councilor Eliza Kashinsky: How much of our work regarding defensible space and hardening is an encouragement level of work versus how much of that is things that people are required to do?

Hannah Shafer: So, Eugene does not have any code currently that requires anybody to maintain a certain level of defensible space around their home and property. 

We do have a vegetation complaint process with code compliance in the fire marshal’s office. If someone makes a complaint, we can require some action be taken under certain conditions. But other than that, there is no code that currently exists. 

So it’s all educational. When I do an assessment, I don’t enforce any of that. It’s all educational and for their awareness.

Presenter: Councilor Matt Keating:

Councilor Matt Keating: Do you see any tension between renters and property owners if a renter is pretty clearly pointing out that there’s some issues on their property?

If you’ve recognized or if you’ve come across this tension, how empowered are renters to point out dangers in their community and access said chipper, for example? 

Hannah Shafer: Yeah. I will say when I’m tabling at events, I do come across a lot of people who say, ‘Well, I rent, so I can’t do anything about that.’ 

But I’m always there to say, ‘If you let your landlord or property management company know that you’re interested in having an assessment done and that funds may be available for the homeowner…’ 

We just need the homeowner property owner’s permission for us to go and do an assessment on the property. And then once we have their information , and contact information, if they’re okay with it, they are eligible for us to go out and do whatever fuels reduction work is possible there. 

Presenter: Councilor Randy Groves: 

Councilor Randy Groves: Our Parks and Open Spaces division of Public Works has been really involved with the Wild Iris Ridge area and I know police are aware of it. Parks is aware of it. 

There’s been some youth behavioral problems up there—youth getting together to drink beer, but they’re building small fires in the middle of summer out into the tall grass. And I know that that’s one of the areas that’s always been of concern to Fire. where a South Hills conflagration could really take off.

(Eugene Parks and Open Space Director) Craig Carnagey’s very aware of the situation, has been extremely helpful in some of that work, including getting a Guardian camera trailer up there right around the Fourth of July because there’s people show up there to light off fireworks as well. 

And it’s not a real easy area to get into, but with prevailing winds out of the south and west and that being kind of the leading edge of Eugene, it’s just ripe with that southern exposure, upslope aspect to really get something going in there.

Is Youth Corps still involved with vegetation mitigation? 

Hannah Shafer: Yeah, we were able to partner up with Youth Corps four times this spring to do, like, five weeks worth of projects, so they’ve been very, very helpful throughout the process. The crews have all been great. Good learning experiences for them to help build up the workforce in this area. 

Presenter: Mayor Kaarin Knudson: 

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): We have such an incredible history in terms of managing waste and connecting those dots and reusing materials that might otherwise end up not having a next life.

And I do think that as we continue to move into the future, looking to model some of our fuels reduction work after some of the work that we’ve done with our leaf collection process, for example, is a good reference point. And it’s something that that resonates in our community.

Is Lane Alerts where community members should be signing up to receive information about wildfire risk and potential need to evacuate? 

Hannah Shafer: For evacuation and alerts, LaneAlerts.com is where they can sign up for those. And for other information, if you go to our website, on the fire marshal’s office page, there’s a wildfire page (so Eugene-or.gov/wildfire) that has some more wildfire-related information.

There’s also good resources on the Oregon state fire marshal’s website as well. 

Kaarin Knudson (Eugene, mayor): Thank you, very appreciated. As we’re discussing circumstances where people might need to know something immediately and follow good advice immediately, that’s always important to share.

Presenter: Hannah Shafer is introducing herself to Eugene neighborhoods, and asking for your feedback on the community wildfire protection plan.