EWEB using wildfire safety settings through end of season

Presenter: With Oregon facing its worst wildfire season ever, EWEB announced extra precautions through the end of the summer. They’ll use wildfire safety settings until the wetting rains arrive in late September or October. To explain what that means for South Eugene residents, EWEB Public Information Officer Aaron Orlowski: 

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): These wildfire safety settings essentially make the lines more sensitive. So if there’s even a slight tap from a tree branch on a line or something like that, it trips off. And this is to prevent a spark from occurring, which could then lead to a fire.

And we don’t re-energize the lines until a person has actually visually inspected them.

So during the day, we’ll get someone out there as soon as possible to visually inspect the line, make sure everything’s functioning. Of course, if there’s a problem, we’ll have to fix that too. But, to make sure everything’s functioning and safe.

And then at night, we’ll need to wait until daytime to be able to actually really visually inspect those lines.

So the end result of all this is customers in those areas, South and Southwest Eugene may experience longer and more frequent outages because the lines are more sensitive, because we’ll do those extra inspections before restoring power.

Presenter: EWEB activated the wildfire settings when the forecast called for low humidities and gusty winds—conditions under which a wildfire can spread quickly. Aaron Orlowski:

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): Last week, the National Weather Service announced that red flag warning, and we adopted wildfire safety settings for an area that comprises about 10% of our customer base, mostly in South and Southwest Eugene. And we’ve just left those on since then.

So even after the red flag warning passed, we made the choice that, you know, this is a hot, dry summer. Wildfire risk remains elevated. So we’re leaving those settings in place for the remainder of the season.  

Presenter: EWEB is constantly refining wildfire mitigation plans, including this year, as forecasting models predicted higher risks. PIO Aaron Orlowski: 

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): In years past, we have adopted wildfire safety settings for a really small portion of our service territory in South Eugene, and it was really, really quite small.

And as we’ve been updating our wildfire mitigation plan, we’ve worked with some and experts to look at the area that should be subjected to those safety settings and we expanded it.

So it’s gone from just a little sliver of South Eugene to, you know, a large portion of the South and Southwest Hills. And we just felt that was necessary. 

The risk of wildfire has increased in recent years. Everyone knows that hotter, drier summers are causing that. And we just felt it was important to make sure we’re being proactive in a larger swath of our service territory.

Presenter: Aaron talked about EWEB’s many preparations for the fire season. 

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): These wildfire safety settings that we’re instituting for that portion of South and Southwest Eugene for the remainder of the summer—that’s one tool in the toolbox, for how we make sure that we’re preventing wildfires and preventing our equipment from being involved with that.

Other tools include tree trimming, or as they call it, vegetation management. So we make sure that we’re paring back the tree limbs every year, too, so that they don’t encroach too closely on power lines. There may have been crews out in your neighborhood doing that recently. We really made a big push recently.

And then another tool that we attempt to use as rarely as possible, is a Public Safety Power Shutoff—a PSPS. And that’s where a utility like EWEB, utilities around the region, proactively shut off power.

So when fire conditions are really severe and really dangerous, extremely high winds, really hot temperatures, dry weather—think of a very severe red flag warning event—utilities might just proactively shut off the power.

If we’re going to do that, we’re going to do our best to give customers at least 24 hours of notice. You know, we’ll be watching the weather forecasts to monitor and see what the conditions are.

But we’ll directly alert customers that would be subject to that and try and give them at least 24 hours notice so that they know it’s coming. but that’s a tool in the toolbox that we’re glad to have, but we really want to use as rarely as possible.

But just so customers know: We do have that, if we need to. 

Presenter: Aaron encouraged residents to prepare for extended power outages. 

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): Some of the main things to weather these warm weather power outages: Always make sure that you have good nonperishable food on hand; always make sure to have your devices appropriately charged; making sure you have enough water on hand. 

And , of course, it’s important to have other preparedness measures in place, kind of in your back pocket, in case these outages go on a long time.

Presenter: This would also be a good time to visit EWEB’s award-winning preparedness program, ‘Pledge to Prepare.’ 

Aaron Orlowski (EWEB): It’s an award-winning program, from regional utility organizations, so we’re really proud of that. A 12-month ‘Pledge to Prepare’ program is a great way to take on preparedness. 

It can be really overwhelming to think about. How are you going to make your home two weeks ready?

And that’s the recommendation from the Oregon Department of Emergency Management, to be ready to be on your own for two weeks, without services.

And when you start thinking about it, it can just feel like a lot. You know, how do you get enough water and food? How do you get the documents assembled?

How do you make sure you have all the backup equipment you might need? 

The ‘Pledge To Prepare’ program breaks it down into manageable pieces. You do a few things every month and then at the end of twelve months, you’re two weeks ready.

And so we really recommend that you sign up right now. There’s never a better time to get prepared than starting today.

Presenter: EWEB announces extra precautions through the end of the 2026 fire season, already the worst in Oregon history.