Prescriptions for Safety
KS Wild has recently partnered with Prescriptions for Safety (P4S), a community led group located in the Little Applegate. P4S is focused on implementing fuels treatments along critical evacuation routes in the area. In partnership with property owners, community members and fire professionals we can prepare the Little Applegate for a wildfire emergency.
Photo Credit: Rich Fairbanks
It’s time to get strategic about wildfires in the Applegate.
Living in the rural forested communities of the Applegate Valley of southwest Oregon comes with the responsibility of knowing how to prepare for wildfire. While many residents in these communities have done their part to create defensible space around their homes, there is still more to do. P4S is bringing local residents together to discuss another wildfire preparation strategy: evacuation routes. If there is a large wildfire that forces the community to evacuate, are the main roads prepared?
Sterling Creek Road, for example, is a main road used to access the Applegate Valley. During an emergency situation, can this route handle a sudden influx of hundreds of frightened drivers evacuating through smoke, while busloads of firefighters and equipment try to get in to attack the fire? Is the route cleared of surface fuels and have the limbs been pruned up? These are important questions to ask when preparing a community for wildfire.
Most wildfires are stopped at roads. Roads offer 15 feet or more of nonflammable surface allowing firefighters to quickly bring equipment to the area. In order for roads to be most useful the vegetation on either side must be maintained to reduce fuel build up. This maintenance is often the most time consuming and difficult part of constructing a fire line while fighting a fire. Many tons of fuel must be removed often in great haste which results in resource damage. Building parts of the fire line before there is the urgency of a wildfire could save money and prevent resource damage. Carefully done, fuel treatments along roads can add value and be esthetically pleasing. To do such work carefully, we should start now, well ahead of the next wildfire.
P4S plans to use software and data on the fuels and topography of the area to select roads that will serve well as fire lines. Science and experience has shown us which roads would make the best fire lines through a system known as PODs (Potential Operational Delineations). Not coincidentally, roads that make good fire lines are often roads that most of us here in the Little Applegate would use to evacuate; Sterling Creek Road, Griffin Lane and Highway 238.
Through mutual learning and collaboration, P4S aims to better prepare the Applegate community for a wildfire emergency. This work is getting started in the Little Applegate neighborhood. Please reach out to Rich Fairbanks at richfairbanks3@gmail.com if you would like to get involved.
