Homeowners near Forest Park organize against wildfires

Portland’s Forest Park is one of the largest urban forests in the country. And like any other forest, it is susceptible to wildfires, especially as the summers get hotter and drier west of the Cascades. For homeowners near the park, a forest fire would be devastating. That’s why some neighborhoods have begun to organize into what are called ‘firewise communities.’ Shawn Looney and Ralph Brooks are volunteer organizers of their neighborhoods’ firewise communities. Kim Kosmas works for the Portland Fire Department. They join us to talk about the work they are doing to educate homeowners and try to prevent a fire in Forest Park.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Portland’s Forest Park is one of the largest urban forests in the country. Like many forests in the west, it’s susceptible to wildfires, especially as summers are getting hotter and drier. For people whose homes are nestled in or near the park, a forest fire would be devastating. So some neighborhoods have begun to organize into what are called ‘firewise communities’. Shawn Looney is a firewise volunteer coordinator in Linton. Ralph Brooks does the same thing in the southern part of Forest Park and Kim Kosmas is the Senior Public Education Officer for the Portland Bureau of Fire and Rescue. They all join me now to talk about their work to prevent fires in Forest Park. It’s good to have all three of you on the show.

Kim Kosmas: Thank you.

Shawn Looney: Thank you.

Dave Miller: Shawn Looney first, can you explain what a firewise community is and then we’ll get to why you started one.

Shawn Looney: Yes. Firewise is a national program that is set up so that it can help communities that happen to live near forest fire prone places such as Forest Park, to make your space more defensible against wildfires.

Dave Miller: How did you get started in this work?

Shawn Looney: Well about five years ago I heard about firewise and at that time I was the Chair of the Linton Neighborhood Association and I thought, boy Linton is in a unique position to really benefit from a program such as firewise. So I got the ball rolling and after about a year we became a firewise community.

Dave Miller: What steps did you have to take, and how did you get people around you to take them?

Shawn Looney: Well, we contacted the firewise program and they gave us the information about what we would need and how many, the criteria wasn’t really that onerous. We had to have eight families, eight households that would agree to have their property assessed, which is all free, to see how they could make themselves more defensible against wildfires. And we very quickly got eight households that agreed. We set up a committee that was the firewise committee and then we were the first community in Multnomah County. So everything was new and the Department of Forestry, Oregon Department of Forestry helped us do an assessment of and a report and we had to come up with goals for our community, how we were gonna make volunteer efforts to make our community safer. And so that’s, that’s how it all got started.

Dave Miller: Ralph Brooks, what about you? You bought your house in Forest Park, if I’m not mistaken, 15 years ago. At that time, how worried were you about wildfire?

Ralph Brooks: I think like most neighbors living near Forest Park, very few. Even 10 years ago, were concerned about wildfires in this area. This area has typically been considered a temperate rainforest and we had rain sufficient to last us and dampness that it really wasn’t a concern. It’s only been in the last five years that we’ve really seen the evidence of climate change and the concerns. Forest Park was closed in 2020 for the first time in history because of wildfire risk. It was crazy. So when we got engaged, it was really intended to help address our neighbor’s concerns. It was Kim Kosmas who really was instrumental in helping us initialize the additional firewise neighborhoods that have been created since Linton was the first in this area,

Dave Miller: Kim Kosmas, it’s not like fears of the possibility of fires in Forest Park are new. There have been fires in the past, although not for a long time. There are fire lanes specifically for that reason. What is new right now?

Kim Kosmas: Well, I would have to say that, with the conditions changing, the warming trends that we’ve been seeing and the ongoing drought that we have been seeing over the last few years, we have been in very bad drought conditions over the last few summers and because of that, everything is changing on the west side of the Cascades, because like Ralph was saying, I mean years ago, people would have never thought that we would be worrying about wildfires on this side of the state. And so it is a new concept that wildfires can happen and have happened in our area and are a very real threat. And so, not to mention the increase of people over the last 20 to 30 years that have moved into these forested areas, and are living within the wildfire hazard zone. We call that the wildfire urban interface, wildland urban interface area, so to say, where you have more people living within the forested areas and any time you add any people to areas that increase of fire greatly has come up because people, it’s just a fact that we know, the human factor is what causes a lot of fires and other things that are specific to the Portland area, which is the unsanctioned camping that happens in the forested areas throughout the city, not just the Forest Park area, but that also with the warming and cooking fires that occur with the unsanctioned camping, greatly increase that chance of fires to occur which have occurred, but they just haven’t grown to to the point where they have expanded and become a conflagration. We’ve been able to get them under control very quickly and extinguish them before they were able to expand.

Dave Miller: I’m interested in sticking to this question about risks because over there, there are a lot of ways a forest fire could start, lightning strikes or downed power lines or campfires that aren’t put out sufficiently, fireworks in, priceless scenic areas like we saw in the Eagle Creek fire. You also mentioned cooking or warming fires from unsanctioned campsites from houseless people. Overall, what do you see as the biggest dangers in terms of wildfire, specifically in Forest Park?

Kim Kosmas: Well, and the thing I like to say is that, back to what I was saying with never having to really be concerned as far as the majority of the, of the organizations in this area, I mean Portland Fire has always had it on our radar that it is something that we are prepared for and trained for and are ready if and when that were to occur. But a large fire in Forest Park hasn’t happened in over 50 years. And so it has not been really on people’s radar so to say, besides our own. And so with the amount of vegetation that we have in the forested areas, it has not been managed for wildfire because it’s not something we ever had to really be concerned with. As far as other organizations and bureaus that are concerned with the forest, it was more like keeping it healthy, keeping the invasives at bay, mustard weed and ivy and those types of things have always been the focus, but because of the warming trends and how things are changing on the ground around us, we need to start thinking of the new concept of not only managing for the invasives, but also managing for defensible space in those areas that are on the border of the Forest Park area and other forested areas throughout the city to create defensible space from structures that are on the exterior of those forested areas like homes and other critical infrastructure that needs to be protected.

Dave Miller: Ralph Brooks, what does creating better defensible space look like in Forest Park?

Ralph Brooks: It’s not so much in the park. We have very little control, frankly. The neighbors have very little influence and control over what occurs in the park. Our concern is the neighborhoods that surround and border the park. So the fireways neighborhoods that we’ve created so far are basically all of the primary neighborhoods surrounding this 5200 acres of heavily forested neighborhood or forested forest. So what it means to the neighborhood in terms of hardening their homes, a lot of it is frankly common sense. Clean your roof, clean your gutters, take the debris off, don’t put up, don’t put firewood next to your house, be prepared for embers that could enter into your home through vents. So adding a fine mesh eighth inch screen to minimize the risk of embers starting fires inside under the roof. It’s eliminating lighter fuels, as Kim noted the invasive English Ivy and Clematis. It’s all over in this park and in many cases it’s all over homes. So the lighter fuels climbing up the trees next to your house, pruning the trees next to your house so that it doesn’t climb the tree and then catch your house on fire. These are all the types of things that were, we’re point, we’re attempting to point out to the neighbors and give them some tools and some education with which to try to minimize the risk when a fire occurs.

Dave Miller: It sounds like when you mentioned English Ivy there, this is a case where getting rid of ivy is a way to both boost the more natural health of the forest and prevent fires from spreading. You can kill two birds with that one stone?

Ralph Brooks: Absolutely.

Dave Miller: It’s just that the forest is still completely full of English Ivy.

Ralph Brooks: But English Ivy is just one of the lighter fuels. If you look at how Forest Park has been managed traditionally, we don’t have clear cutting, we don’t have prescribed burns. So the fire load in the forest has progressively grown and as we have this, traditionally, have not had problems with the summers. Now we have these very dry summers and when the fire risk is excessive, the fire load in the forest is very high and it’s the neighbors surrounding that, that when a fire occurs, we’re attempting to try to minimize the risk to the structures surrounding that.

Dave Miller: Shawn Looney, I want to go back to you. You said that it wasn’t hard at the beginning to get the Linton firewise community off the ground, You needed to get eight families on board. What has it been like to try to build momentum from there, doing all the things that Ralph Brooks mentioned, but including potentially convincing people in the area to say, chop down trees that they love that are close to their homes and may provide shade or privacy or or plain old beauty. What are those conversations like?

Shawn Looney: Well, I always start every conversation about firewise with saying, we’re not going to tell you what to do, we’re going to tell you what could make you safer. And we’re not going to say you must cut down that tree that you love so much that’s a little too close to your house. But you might want to limb it up so that if there were to be a fire, it wouldn’t catch everything else on fire quite so readily. And we let people know that it is a choice that they should make that will make themselves and their neighbors safer. And of course, if your neighbor isn’t, hasn’t bought into it, that makes you more vulnerable. So we try to do it in that sense.

Dave Miller: What have you been able to do with a major grant from FEMA, half a million dollars?

Shawn Looney: I’m gonna let Kim Kosmas talk about that because she has been instrumental in that grant. Kim?

Kim Kosmas: Thank you Shawn. Yes. No, that the Grant was awarded to the Parks Bureau and the Fire Bureau and Forest Park Conservancy as the partnership moving forward for this FEMA grant. And yet the majority of the work has been done on the Parks Bureau side. The bulk of the work is with contractors that they have hired to do that fuel mitigation along the Park, Parks Bureau boundary that surrounds Linton and they are creating defensible space within 200 ft of all the structures that are within Linton on the boundaries, I should say. And they’ve been doing an amazing amount of work. And so the Parks Bureau has been totally instrumental in managing that project and Portland Fire and Forest Park Conservancy have been tasked with the outreach and getting the, increasing the knowledge of what people can do to reduce that risk of wildfire. Not only that, but encouraging residents within the area by doing a lot of canvassing and outreach with the residents on signing up for the assessments that we, Portland’s Fire does to give them recommendations on what things they can do to harden their homes against wildfires and also changing the characteristics of the vegetation that’s around their home because the biggest focus for us is to educate people and what they can do to keep themselves safe. Also, evacuating correctly when an incident does occur, leaving sooner than later But hardening their homes so that embers can’t find their way onto or into their homes because a lot of the homes in 2020 burned from the inside out and then also, like I said, changing characteristic of the vegetation around their home, so if a fire is approaching, it basically has things that will break up that continuity of the pathway for that fire to make its way to the side of their house.

Dave Miller: Everything you’re talking about there, everything we’ve talked about so far in this conversation is about making it less likely that if there is a fire, that people’s homes will be destroyed. But what about changes, Kim Kosmas, to the way the forest itself is thought about and managed. Is it time to actually take that seriously?

Kim Kosmas: It definitely is, but I would tell you that you cannot fireproof a forest. It is very difficult. And where we live, we’re not in Eastern Oregon where there’s not as much vegetation growth on the ground. We are in the Portland area where it’s very green and lush and there’s always going to be a lot of vegetation growing. And so to think that the forest could be fireproofed is not realistic. So that’s where we focus in on, yes, we can work on removing some of those invasives that climb up into the trees because the biggest thing for us, as in the Fire Bureau, is trying to find ways to be able to keep that fire on the ground and so it doesn’t climb up into the trees and get into the canopy. But because it is a mixed forest where you have coniferous trees, you have deciduous trees and so it’s not as likely to jump from tree to tree if there is a forest fire, that it may be in a grove of trees and not necessarily extend through the entire forest as quickly. So that is a good thing compared to other forests, like we’ve seen, that it’s a lot of coniferous trees and those fir trees just go from one to the next to the next. And so that’s where entire forests have been burned. So our focus is yes, to educate everyone that we’re working with and that not only includes residents, but also the organizations and bureaus that we’re working with on ways that we can work together on reducing that risk of wildfire, but also for the residents and people that we’re working with is to learn how to harden their homes and create that defensible space, so then it will essentially help the neighborhoods that are involved become more resilient, because if a fire does happen, there’s less likelihood that the neighborhood will burn or be affected as badly. There’s no silver bullet, but yet you can do a lot of things that have that have been scientifically proven to make a big difference when a fire is approaching, as in hardening the home and even within the first 10ft around your home, creating that defensible space can make a huge difference.

Dave Miller: Ralph Brooks, what do you want visitors to Forest Park to keep in mind, especially as we get into the summer or into the fall?

Ralph Brooks: Oh, wow. Well, there’s many facets. The first would be, a sense of urgency, the awareness of a wildfire is not in the visitor’s minds. It certainly hasn’t traditionally been in the neighborhood’s minds, but certainly awareness and a sense of urgency in trying to address the risks for wildfire. The second is, some of the concerns that we’re facing and trying to implement, these types of hardening have been, how shall I say, challenging at best, frustrating is probably a better word. It’s not just the education, it’s when we inform landowners and property owners, here are some things you can do to harden your home, and when they attempt to implement those changes, they’re faced with a mounting list of challenges whether it’s the cost, whether it’s the regulations for pruning, whether it’s the regulations from environmental overlays and what you can and cannot do to your property, it’s the education of what they are allowed and how they have to go through a permit process and the funding of that. Those are just a few of the challenges that we’re facing in trying to educate and once that education is done to help our neighbors implement the hardening of their properties.

Dave Miller: In other words, part of what you’re talking about there is what you see is too much city bureaucracy getting in the way of work that certainly some members of the city itself say needs to be done.

Ralph Brooks: It’s always a tradeoff. You mentioned earlier, what do you tell neighbors who like their trees next to their homes and they live in the forest because they want to be in the forest? It’s always a trade off, but there is certainly a high, Portland has, traditionally in Multnomah County, has a very high bar in terms of what is legally allowed. And that bar is becoming even more challenging with the recent implementation of environmental zones. In the wetlands, you don’t want people going and cutting down everything in the wetlands. Got it, but you need to have some, some trade off to help neighbors harden their homes. And we’ve been working with Urban Forestry, we were working with Portland Parks to try to address things like Title 11, one of the city codes that addresses trees. The Portland Parks has an ability today to do up to 200 ft around structures. Homeowners don’t, we can do 30 ft., so we’ve been, one of the challenges we’ve been working towards is trying to address some of those, relief from regulation, but so far it’s been little to no avail, where it’s a complex world. It’s a complex regulation system and it’s a pretty high burden for neighbors to have to overcome.

Dave Miller: Ralph Brooks, Shawn Looney and Kim Kosmas, thanks very much.

Kim Kosmas: Thank you.

Ralph Brooks: Thank you.

Shawn Looney: Thank you.

Dave Miller: Ralph Brooks and Shawn Looney are volunteer coordinators for their respective areas around Forest Park, Ralph Brooks in the southern section of Forest Park, Shawn Looney in the Linton community. Kim Kosmas is the Senior Public Education Officer for Portland’s Fire and Rescue.

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