Sisters residential areas rank high in wildfire danger assessment

Tollgate residents live under an extreme threat from wildfire. So do folks living in Panoramic View Estates and in Crossroads and Camp Sherman.

In fact, there are very few places in the Sisters area that can count themselves safe from wildfire.

Now that the City of Sisters, Deschutes County, and local structural and wildland fire agencies have signed the Greater Sisters Community Fire Plan, Sisters area residents have some quantitative evidence about the danger they are in.

For the first time 14 local communities were scientifically evaluated in this plan as to wildland fire risk and 10 were ranked “high” to “extreme.” Two major rankings were prepared. One evaluated the overall community’s risk of wildfire while another system ranked the vulnerability of structures.

“I think it is important to the public in the plan area to understand the risk that we are under,” said Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District (RFPD) Fire chief Taylor Robertson. “This has been a scientific look at that risk and it quantifies that risk. It not about ‘scare tactics’ as much as seeking public awareness that we still have a lot of work to do.”

Topping the list of communities at extreme risk is the 423-acre Tollgate subdivision west of Sisters with an average score of 193 out of 400. It was followed closely by the 241-acre Crossroads subdivision west of town with a score of 191, the 1,138-acre Panoramic View Estates subdivision east of Sisters with a score of 187, and the 1,694-acre Camp Sherman area with a score of 183.

Other communities rated “extreme” are the 817-acre Sage Meadow area, the immediate Sisters area covering 3,533 acres and the 810-acre Indian Ford Meadow subdivision with scores ranging from 172 to 179.

The Squaw Creek area, Black Butte Ranch, Cascade Meadows, Forked Horn Estates, Suttle Lake, Plainview Estates, and Aspen Lakes all were rated high to medium-high.

Panoramic View Estates was rated extreme because of its vegetation, insufficient access and inadequate water supply. Camp Sherman, the City of Sisters and surrounding areas, and Crossroads were rated high to extreme because of some of the same factors, plus construction standards, building density, and other factors.

“The goal of the action plan part of the community fire plan is to make all structures within the plan area as fire safe as possible and to have all communities and structures survive a wildland fire,” said Chief Robertson.

Local wildfires of recent years and the current high to extreme fire danger being experienced this summer all indicate how vulnerable Sisters area communities are to the threat of wildfire, Robertson explained.

Robertson said that the plan also recognizes that work needs to be done on the public lands in the area. Increased partnerships with the Forest Service will do more to reduce fuels around communities at risk.

“People need to find out where their community sits,” Robertson said. “Then they can look around to see what can be done to mitigate this risk. All of the agencies involved are available to offer advice on what can be done to reduce that risk.”

The National Fire Plan funded the plan following disastrous local wildfires of 2002 and 2003 that threatened many homes, destroyed some and caused several evacuations of residents.

Besides the City of Sisters and the Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire District, other agencies participating in applying the plan’s recommendations are the Cloverdale RFPD, the Black Butte Ranch RFPD, Deschutes County, Oregon Department of Forestry, Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Coordinator for the project was Marcus Kauffman of the Watershed Research and Training Center at the University of Oregon.

Copies of the 61-page document are available for reading at the Sisters Library, Sisters City Hall, Sisters Fire Hall, Camp Sherman Fire Station, Cloverdale Fire Station, Sisters Ranger Station, and Black Butte Ranch Fire Station. View the plan online at http://www.sistersfire.com/mission/Wildfire/wildfire2.htm.