Curt Wilson, AIA
AIAO Executive Director/CEO
More Unprecedented Times
“Unprecedented times” was the title of the Message From that I wrote for the March 19, 2020 edition of the Thursdays@Three. Since then, we’ve seen the start a racial justice movement, and historic fires in Oregon. This is simply overwhelming.
My focus right now is the catastrophic fires that are engulfing the western states, and more specifically Oregon. Based on this map, there are currently 37 fires in Oregon. As I write this message from my home outside of Eugene, the skies are full of smoke and ash from the Holiday Farm fire up the McKenzie River. The fire started the evening of Labor Day, 9/7 and is currently 0% contained. The mandatory evacuation zone extends from the McKenzie Ranger Station to the Thurston community of east Springfield. Our friends in Southern Oregon are impacted by the Almeda Drive fire devasted areas of Talent and Phoenix. The area east of Salem is under siege from the Beachie Creek fire, with an enormous mandatory evacuation zone that extends to the outskirts of Portland. Air quality, power outages, mandatory evacuations impact almost of all of us, although we probably know of others that are dealing with worse conditions.
“How can we help?” is a question I have heard many from many people the last few days. I believe we should approach this from three perspectives: now, immediate aftermath, and moving forward.
Now
Per the map above, many of the fires are 0% contained so the threat is very much alive. Pay attention to evacuation notices and be ready. I suggest listening to the radio and going to the emergency management website for your county. Find your county here: https://wildfire.oregon.gov/county-resources.
Know the evacuations levels: Level 1 – Be Ready, Level 2 – Be Set, and Level 3 - Go. https://wildfire.oregon.gov/
Be aware of the air quality in your area and the impact to your family and pets. https://www.oregon.gov/deq/aq/pages/aqi.aspx
If you have other resources, please send to me (cwilson@aiaoregon.org) and we’ll share on the AIA Oregon Resources page.
Immediate Aftermath
I don’t know how many people have evacuated from the various fires, nor the number of evacuation centers across the state, but there are many. Fellow Oregonians need food and supplies. Red Cross, community food banks, etc. will need volunteers and donations. I know in the Eugene-Springfield area, Food for Lane County is feeding some of the people impacted by the Holiday Farm fire. If you know of other organizations helping people in need impacted by the fire, send me a link and we’ll add to our resources page. This is the moment where each of us can do a little to have a big impact in our communities.
I was in a meeting today with a state senator and he warned us that the loss of life from these fires will be significant and encouraged us to be prepared. I don’t know how to prepare for that, but now is the time to be a good neighbor.
Moving Forward
At some point in the not-too-distant future, our communities will clean up and rebuild. As active members of our communities and as architects, how do we positively impact this process? How do we help prioritize creating a more resilient Oregon? How do we prioritize climate action? How does this unprecedented event become an anomaly and not the new normal? We can let these questions overwhelm us, or we can use our considerable skills to lead Oregon forward.
We changed the topic of the 9/11 AIA Oregon Virtual Happy Hour to focus on supporting each other in this time of need, sharing resources and suggestions to help our neighbors, and how we can positively impact our communities as architects. Join me at 4:00 tomorrow for the discussion.
Be prepared, be safe.
Yours respectfully,
Curt Wilson, AIA
AIA Oregon Executive Director
Continually Updated Resources Available:
Inciweb (national incident information site that can be sorted by state)
Report from Cindy Robert on the Governor’s Press Conference on September 9
Governor
-900,000 acres burned as of today
Nearly twice the yearly average in last decade
Never seen this much fire related damage
30,000-40,000 Oregonians evacuated so far
Go to Wildfire.oregon.gov for latest updates in each community
10 incident management teams in place around state
National guard, army corps of engineers and red cross assisting
Today should have been the end of the weather system, but now facing unstable air conditions that make response activity very difficult
State has tapped Oregon National Guard members, seeking additional National Guard capacity from surrounding states
30 trained crews from Department of Corrections out working with firefighters
Strike teams coming from Utah tonight
Many firefighters are scheduled to return to college, but Governor has asked universities to let them continue to work and not be penalized for staying out of school.
Yesterday, she began the process of setting up Governor’s disaster cabinet to streamline distribution of resources.
Doug Grafe, Chief of Fire Protection/Mariana Ruiz-Temple, Office of State Fire Marshal
Riverside spotting over Estacada, most aggressive fire yesterday. Planning for Beachie Creek fire and Riverside fire to merge, which will create explosive activity.
Between Estacada/Stayton, fire continues to push west, downslope. Wind hasn’t shifted as they’d hoped, so focus is still on life safety and structure protection in those areas.
Lionshead: making progress establishing anchor lines where they can, with dozers and hand crews. Moving from only life safety to suppression
Holiday: 144k acres, significant # of landowner resources involved. They now have many areas where they can establish anchor lines and start to contain. Too much smoke for aviation
National Guard helicopter moved to north where there is less smoke.
Archie Creek in fire Umpqua drainage-107k acres. Not really able to do suppression in there, but expect to be able to get into that tonight
Klamath. Established containment lines, but those got pushed out, so reestablishing today. Multiple landowner resources involved.
Ashland—Alameda Drive—outstanding progress
South Obenchain—20k acres. Interagency team is making progress on containment lines. These are the first steps they’ve been able to take, they have maybe 5% of open fire lines contained. Aviation possible at some times of day.
Echo mountain outside Lincoln city—good progress. Lines created yesterday have held, great work over night.
California fire moved into our southwest border yesterday, this is the #1 priority in nation.
Major General Stencel, Oregon National Guard—
National Guard providing three types of assistance:
Traffic control (TCP) In Jackson County they are standing up 6 TCPs, starting 6 more in Lane Co, they expect greater need so are screening 200 more volunteers, should be ready next week.
Aviation - Providing 9 aircraft + 1 Black hawk to provide medivac support on westside.
Ground crews-- 200 trained teams of 25 each, mobilized right now and will arrive in Holiday camp + others over the weekend. Bringing in active duty firefighting support to fight fire on federal land.
Director Phelps—Office of Emergency Management (OEM) coordination
Life safety still OEM’s #1 priority.
Asking people not to return to evacuated areas.
Working with sheriff’s office to coordinate reentry. DO NOT go back to check out damage, it’s disrespectful to those who worked to get you out.
Leveraging Red Cross safe + well registry, if you’ve been evacuated, please use it. Also working on a statewide registry for missing.
Actively working with multi-state emergency mgmt. assistance compact, Utah being extraordinarily helpful.
FEMA sent incident mgmt. team to be co-located at OEM command center.
Evacuation zone in Clackamas County has expanded and now includes Molalla.
Questions:
Q. Extent of financial loss?
A. Too soon to know, everyone should just be focused on saving lives
Q. Two dead people in marion co, one in Medford. Do we have any idea of scope of fatalities yet?
A. Don’t know yet, but will provide info to public as quickly as possible
Q. Do you know what has caused these fires yet?
A. Marianna says downed power lines due to significant wind event are source of several, but they don’t know about others.
Q. Is state able to afford to keep fighting fires? Does this change the way we pay for firefighting efforts going forward?
A. Wildfire council was convened, had extensive report, legislation was drafted. It will cost a lot of money to ensure we have healthy landscapes. Governor says she’s committed to moving that legislation forward in 2021 and expects bipartisan support. ODF will have financial resources available to fight fires as needed.
Q. What specific help did you request from nat’l gov’t?
A. Multiple types. Asked for emergency declaration, still waiting on word from white house. Asked DOD to send an active battalion trained in firefighting.
Q. How many more firefighters does Oregon need?
A. Grafe—we have 10 incident management teams on Oregon ground. Generally, we have 200-300 firefighters on each fire + several hundred on initial attack. Currently, we have a total of about 3,000 on the effort. We need to double that number to get arms around these fires.
Q. What percentage of firefighter force are students?
A. Grafe— Contractors are providing 20-30- person crews. Right now, 30% of those crews are supposed to go back to college in next few weeks, and at this moment they’re on front lines. Last time they had to get excused absences for college students was in 1987, they expect to have to do it again this year.
Q. how well has reverse 911 system worked?
A. people usually have to opt-in to these systems. State is also using IPAWS--integrated public alert wireless system—those have 70% contact rate, but some people disable those. IPAWS info comes from counties.
