Protecting Sisters Country from wildfire

So far this year, Sisters has escaped a major wildfire. But our recent history of conflagrations and evacuations leads folks in the Sisters Country to know that the threat is ever-present.

A coalition of public safety and education organizations recently released the final draft of the Greater Sisters Country Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The Greater Sisters Country CWPP will be available on the Deschutes County Web site at http://www.deschutes.org.

Community members have until the end of this month to review the draft plan and make comment.

Sisters Fire Chief Tay Robertson said the plan is "a wonderful tool for meeting our objectives of making our communities more safe from wildfire."

The plan contains mitigation steps that "if followed, will continue to improve the problem that we have with fire in the interface."

Key components of the Greater Sisters Country CWPP address priorities on public and private lands that surround communities as well as homeowners' responsibilities for providing defensible space around their homes. The plan will also increase the potential for receiving grant funding in the Sisters area to reduce hazardous vegetation in private neighborhoods.

The plan identifies Camp Sherman and Black Butte Ranch as "extreme risk priority communities" where mitigation work needs to be concentrated.

Tollgate, Indian Ford, Squaw Creek Canyon Estates, Crossroads, Plainview, the City of Sisters and Panoramic were all identified as "very high risk priority communities" and Suttle Lake, Sage Meadow, Forked Horn, Aspen Lakes and Cascade Meadow Ranch were identified as "high risk priority communities."

"There are no low-risk communities in our area," Robertson said.

The two communities bringing up the bottom of the list are Oregon Department of Forestry certified Firewise communities.

"Aspen Lakes and Cascade Meadow (Ranch) are particularly to be commended for their work," Robertson said.

That work includes using safe building materials, clearing away yard debris and creating defensible space for the community and individual houses.

In a related effort, Project Wildfire secured a Department of Homeland Security grant to provide signs for communities that face a high likelihood of evacuation during a wildfire. Signs pointing out evacuation routes have been installed in Tollgate and Crossroads in recent weeks.

"We were able to purchase 3,000 of those signs and were able to offer them to the neighborhoods that have evacuation issues," said Katie Lighthall of Project Wildfire, one of the partners in the CWPP.

The signs are designed to reflect headlights so they can be read in conditions where smoke and lack of light make a neighborhood dark and scary.

"It hopefully will reduce some of that anxiety in the event of a wildfire emergency," Lighthall said.

The Greater Sisters Country CWPP Steering Committe includes members of the greater Sisters community, Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District, Cloverdale RFPD, Black Butte Ranch Fire Department, Oregon Department of Forestry, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, Deschutes County and Project Wildfire.

For more information contact Kate Lighthall at 322-7129.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
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