Community mitigation and alerts under consideration in regional response plan
The Wasco County Board of Commissioners approved an intergovernmental agreement with Oregon State University (OSU) Extension to develop regional community response plans to help mitigate extreme wildfire smoke events in the Gorge. Plan development will involve public health providers and other service organizations in the region, according to Lauren Kraemer of OSU Extension, based in The Dalles.
Lauren Kraemer
The grant was received from Oregon DEQ in December, and has to be awarded through a government agency. Since Wasco County has been a long-time fiscal partner with OSU Extension, administrating the grant through Wasco County made sense, Kraemer said. The work, however, will include Hood River County as well as Wasco.
There will be opportunities for Wasco County staff to be involved in the work, “at their discretion and desire,” Kraemer told the board during a regular meeting of the commissioners March 2. That would include emergency managers and others interested in being a part of the community response plan process, she said.
The planning process is expected to be completed in about a year and will culminate in a “table-top exercise where we can actually practice these communication strategies and deploy them in a mock ‘smoke inundation event’ or natural disaster scenario,” Kraemer said. “Hopefully we will be able to have everybody around a table (in-person) where we can practice the efforts and strategies we’ve designed in the community response plan process,” she said.
Commissioner Kathy Schwartz said she was pleased to see the program get going. “We’ve certainly had some very catastrophic smoke events here, and I expect we’ll have more,” she said. “This will help us be better prepared, for sure.
“I really appreciate your pursuing this grant, and being willing to implement this work,” she added.
Kraemer noted additional grants related to smoke that have been received, including one to install 10 smoke sensors at orchards in both Hood River and Wasco counties, and integration of those sensors with community alert systems and data gathering statewide.
The draft plan is expected to be completed in March, 2023, and will outline what communities can do in the event of an extreme smoke event in the Gorge. Kraemer said the combined grants should result in community notification of when smoke has reached hazardous levels, and what mitigation might be needed — for example, staying indoors or wearing Personal Protective Equipment when levels are extreme.
Kraemer noted additional grants are also being pursued, including one that would incorporate additional smoke sensors at Oregon schools in the Gorge. Such sensors could help guide educators as they decide whether kids should recreate indoors or out, she said.
When the system is in place and functional, the result will be both “immediate and long-term behavior changes,” she said, as the community learns to respond to hazardous levels of smoke in the Gorge. Some mitigation strategies to reduce smoke, for example, will be long term considerations, ideas that include chipping forest and orchard waste rather than burning it; air-curtain incinerators that reduce smoke and creates biomass from burning that does occur. More immediate could be community drop-off of debris for composting that otherwise is burned, home availability of smoke filtering masks and indoor air purifiers and warning systems so communities know when they should take precautions and what those precautions should be.
The work will also include educating community members about what kind of precautions should be taken when smoke levels are high, and what residents should do to get ready for high-smoke events. Such precautions can include avoiding outside work, wearing a KN95 respirator mask to filter out particulate matter, and having extra filters for the home.
“One of the things we learned in the Labor Day fires, as soon as the smoke arrives air purifiers, filters, all of the things you might want (to deal with the smoke) are sold out at local stores,” Kraemer said.
Community education will also focus on state DEQ and other funding available for low income residents to purchase protective materials for their homes, she added. Those funds can help with sealing of doors and windows as well as air filtering options in the home.
Smoke from wildfires, debris burning and other sources contains small particulars that can get into the lungs and cause or exacerbate breathing-related health problems, both short and long term.
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