The cooler, rainy weather has allowed the fire fighters to better contain more of the fires across the state, and the response continues to transition from life safety protection to recovery planning. The State of Oregon, impacted counties and community organizations are leading the recovery effort and have many resources available. We’ve provided links to many fire response and recovery resources on the AIA Oregon website.

Groups from AIA Eugene section and AIA Southern Oregon section have started meeting to determine how we, as active members of a professional associations and as individuals, can help the impacted communities around us recover. Both groups are reaching out to community leaders to offer our assistance to determine the needs we can fill. This may include coordination of permitting processes to support time-sensitive rebuilding, evaluation of local development patterns that may have contributed to the fire’s advance, neighborhood-level planning to help guide redevelopment, fire-resistive construction best practices, supporting clients, etc.

Community rebuilding at this scale is not something most of us are familiar with, therefore we are looking to others for assistance. This includes the AIA Disaster Assistance Program and AIA California, who unfortunately, has too much experience helping communities rebuild after a fire. We want to be available to our communities as creative problem solvers with the experience to lead large groups and address a multitude of factors.

The effort to rebuild Oregon communities from the devastating fires will be a long journey and will require many of us. If you want to get involved, please reach out to AIA Oregon EVP/CEO Curt Wilson, AIA at cwilson@aiaoregon.org