As the weather begins to grow hotter and drier, community members should prepare to protect their homes from wildfires.
Kyle Reed, a fire prevention specialist for the Douglas Forest Protective Association, said there are many things residents can do now to keep their properties safe during fire season.
"It's about just being prepared before there's a reason to worry and you have smoke in the air and fire on the hillside," Reed said. He said the DFPA encourages residents to clear away or reduce flammable objects within 200 feet of their homes.
They can start with the home itself, cleaning out leaves and pine needles from gutters and roofs and making sure wood or gas tanks aren't leaning against the house. Reed said the next step is working to keep the areas within 30 feet of the house "lean and green" by mowing grass and pruning plants. Plants like juniper that have many resins and waxes burn intensely and should be removed within that space, according to Reed.
Within the rest of the 200 feet around the house, homeowners are encouraged to prune trees, remove underbrush, mow tall grass and remove all dead or dying vegetation. Reed said it's important to get rid of fuels that act like ladders for a fire to climb to the tops of trees, including blackberry bushes and poison oak. Large trees provide helpful shade to keep temperatures down, but Reed said limbs lower than 6 to 10 feet high can be cut to prevent the potential spread of fire.
"Ultimately it's trying to give your home a chance to survive and give firefighters an opportunity to try to protect your home, and doing that before you need to," Reed said.
The DFPA currently permits backyard debris burning this spring, though Reed urged people to be cautious and responsible by having fire tools and water on site, and to make sure burn piles are completely extinguished before being left alone.
"Even a small pile will hold heat for a week or two, and things are much drier at that point and could potentially become a problem," Reed said.
Community members can also come together to join the National Fire Protection Association's Firewise program, which helps address local areas at risk of fire. According to Reed, there are 20 recognized Firewise communities in Douglas County working with the DFPA, including one in a neighborhood in Umpqua.
The Firewise program offers national grant funding to send crews to cut vegetation around homes and other fire-related projects.
Tom Hall, of Umpqua, said he and his neighbors live in a heavily-forested area, so they decided to get involved with Firewise to have crews develop defensible space around their homes.
"We were just absolutely amazed and pleased with all the work and effort they did for us," Hall said.
He said his street does not have a safe place for an emergency vehicle to turn around, meaning firetrucks and ambulances may not be able to access the homes there in the event of a fire.
His Firewise community is planning to take part in National Wildfire Community Preparedness Day this Saturday, using a $500 mini-grant from NFPA and State Farm Insurance to work on widening the road and creating a truck turnaround at the end of the road.
As of May 1, the National Interagency Fire Center predicts above normal fire potential for southwest Oregon for both July and August, with above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation.
"For a lot of years, the difference between a good summer and a bad summer has been the amount of lightning we get," Reed said. "With the fuels we've had, and as dry as things have been the last four or five years, every fire start has the potential of being a large, devastating, expensive fire."
He said on average, 75 percent of fires on DFPA-protected lands each year are human-caused, like the Horse Prairie Fire that burned 16,436 acres near Riddle during the 2017 fire season.
So far this year, the DFPA has only reported one wildfire, an 8-acre fire two miles southwest of Glendale on April 23. Crews were able to stop the fire that same evening.
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