When you think of rainforests, wildfires don’t typically come to mind. But the Director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management said that’s changing –rapidly.

“We’re now having fires burning in areas that typically didn’t burn. Parts of the Pacific Northwest center, considered rainforests, now experience wildfires,” said Andrew Phelps in an interview.

The Pacific temperate rainforests of western North America is the largest temperate rain forest region on the planet.

These fires, he said, “aren’t just now burning during a typical fire season which, in Oregon, historically has been, July through maybe September. We’re now having wildfire responses year-round.”

The ability to successfully respond to these fires is predicated on coordination, relationships, and partnerships. Phelps said it’s important for every stakeholder to know what their role is.

“As we see more impacts of climate change that are increasing our wildfire risk and increasing our risk of excessive temperatures, we need to get much smarter and more innovative, with how we reduce our risk.”

He said it’s no longer just how we respond to a fire, “it’s what we’re doing before a fire starts that reduces the exposures, reduces the fuel loads in our forests, and makes our homes more able to sustain impacts from wildfires.”

But the impacts of more frequent wildfires extend well beyond the places where they happen.

“You don’t have to live in Oregon and have a wildfire burning on your doorstep to be impacted by wildfires,” Parts of the Pacific Northwest, parts of the entire western half of the U. S. are blanketed in wildfire smoke every summer into the fall”, Phelps said.

The smoke takes a toll on those who have medical conditions, like asthma. It leads to the closures of state forests and natural areas where people gather to recreate, especially during the summer months.

Fire is not their only concern.

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management says on its website, the beauty and splendor of Oregon make it a great place to live, but it warns that it is a place that experiences its share of extreme weather, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and even tornadoes.

“Under the best of circumstances, government agencies and other emergency organizations can’t protect you from disaster. It’s our responsibility as individuals, neighborhoods, and communities to be aware of hazards and risks, to prepare for the critical period immediately following a disaster, and to make sure that disaster preparedness has the high priority it deserves”, the site says.

Phelps says his team stays in constant contact with its partners to make sure people are ready for potential disasters. At the top of that list of partners is FEMA.

“We’ve had two regular touchpoints with FEMA over the last several years here in Oregon; from ice storms to COVID, of course, preparing for the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and that threat that is looming off our coast.”

He said their relationships need to be “strong” and they extend beyond Oregon.

“We work really closely with our regional FEMA partners out of the Seattle area in Washington State and then we have a lot of great connectivity with FEMA headquarters back in DC and with Administrator Criswell, who came to Oregon this past summer.”

A key part of their disaster preparation process is to make sure they can communicate with the public. Phelps says they’ve adopted several solutions to communicate information about threats at the state, county and city levels.

“We’re leveraging the federal IPAWS system, the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, so that if we do need to do large scale evacuations, we can get messages out to cellphones based on their location and what cell phone tower they’re utilizing”.

They also use the emergency alert system to send messages on television and radio and send out push-alerts to people who opt-in.

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