Ashland YMCA was the first to ask the city how to create a plan to safeguard staff and clients, including children; the Y’s CEO encourages other organizations to follow suit

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

The Ashland Family YMCA has always had an internal safety plan, says Heidi Hill, chief executive of the organization. But not until last fall did the nonprofit have a specific plan for a wildfire evacuation on the books. It is the first local organization to ask Ashland Emergency Management Coordinator Kelly Burns how to make such a plan.

Hill and her leadership team came together late last year to talk through the issue. They decided to take a thoughtful approach to how the nonprofit would handle a serious evacuation strategy.

“I was embarrassed that we didn’t have one because people entrust their children to us, and not only that, but we serve as a community center,” Hill said.

“This place is very meaningful to a lot of people and,” she said. “It’s a safe place for them. “It really was time for us, I felt, to focus on a wildfire evacuation plan.”

Burns surprised Hill when he told her she was the first to ask him about one.

“We’ve been approached by other businesses, but not about evacuation plans,” Burns told Ashland.news in a separate interview.

How long it takes to create an evacuation plan depends on an organization’s size, capacity and attention span, Burns said.

“They need the plan now, they needed it yesterday,” he said.

“I think individually, as well as organizations, it’s something that needs to be taken seriously and just needs to become part of the normal fabric of what you do as you do business here in the valley.”

Burns praised the Ashland Chamber of Commerce for leading the charge when it comes to emergency preparedness for businesses in general.

“They have an emergency preparedness tool kit that they designed that’s available for free,” Burns said.

Be ready to adapt

Burns emphasized that making an evacuation plan is just the first step. The next is to prepare to be ready when things don’t go as planned.

“You should be ready to adapt and change gears and make good decisions in the moment,” Burns said.

In July the YMCA had a chance to put its evacuation plan into action with the Neil Creek Fire, one of more than 50 fires sparked by lightning.

“That actually gave us (an) opportunity to practice our own plan,” Hill said.

Hill recalls staff waking up at 4 a.m. many days to see where the zones were in terms of evacuation levels.

“If the evacuation zones next to us were at a Level 2, we wouldn’t be opening the Y,” she said.

“That is to enable parents to pick up their kids,” she said, and “to exit our primary facility and go to their respective homes and get ready, get set themselves.

“We would open our extending sites, but we weren’t opening the Y,” she said. “And so, every day, it kind of gave us an insight into at least monitoring and communicating with our parents and our members about what we’re doing for safety.”

Hill encourages individuals and organizations to prepare a plan before it is needed.

She found that although the process to create an evacuation can seem intimidating at first, “It also just requires a layer of common sense, discussions that are better had ahead of time than in the moment.”

The right time for a plan

Hill said the Ashland YMCA drew on some draft wildfire evacuation plans from other YMCA camps throughout the country, then focusing on customizing the plan to Ashland and its Y members. She said the nonprofit also drew on the expertise of Burns. An internal audit was taken of assets for communication and to determine where the Y would have people located. The Y “developed a plan from there,” Hill said.

On any given weekday, she said, the Ashland YMCA could have about 550 people at its YMCA Way facility, including day camp kids.

The nonprofit also has three off-site locations — Helman, Walker and Talent elementary schools — with a total of 60 students, plus an additional 15 staff working just within the Rogue Valley, Hill said.

“This doesn’t count the additional 150 kids or more that we have at Camp DeBoer” at Lake of the Woods, she said.

Dealing with variables

“Our plan really focused on, where is the risk?” she said. “Where are our programs located and in what zones? How do we work with the existing evacuation protocols, like Level 1, Level 2, Level 3.”

Identifying how to transport youths and staff members is another key part of the YMCA making a plan.

“We have a small fleet of cars but not nearly enough for everyone,” Hill said.

She said the Y has a positive relationship with the Ashland School District. But in the event of a wildfire evacuation, she said, it isn’t clear what transportation resources would be available to the Y from the district.

“We have to rely on our families and our members being responsible and responsive, too, if there is an evacuation,” Hill said.

Hill said the Y does have access to two buses that are kept at Camp DeBoer during the summer months. “That is their evacuation strategy,” she said.

Three designated sites for evacuees

Based on where a fire were located, the YMCA has identified three possible evacuation destinations if staff had to evacuate with children, Hill said: a Fred Meyer store in Medford, All Star Liquors in Hornbrook, California, and the Grants Pass YMCA.

“We had to identify where would we convene,” she said.

Hill encouraged YMCA members and nonmembers to sign up for the Ashland Y’s text messages by texting AFYMCA to 54539.

“We only use texts for communications about facilities or emergencies or closures,” she said.

Hill said there has been a good response to the text program, with about 2,000 to 3,000 of its 9,000 members signed up.

“At first people were very hesitant to sign up, but that’s become less and less,” she said.

Hill, who came to the Y in fall of 2022, is no stranger to emergency management. She was exposed to emergency management training while working in the offices of the mayor and city manager of Medford. But that level of experience isn’t necessary to get started on a plan.

“I think it’s a challenge for organizations to train the … multiple layers of staff,” she said. First, staffers need to know what the wildfire or emergency plan is. Then they need to know “what their role is in it.”

“That’s really our next hurdle,” she said. “Now that we have the plan, how do we enculturate the plan so that everybody knows what our protocols are?”

Reach Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].