Lahaina devastation prompts questions about Ashland’s preparedness

By Morgan Rothborne for Ashland.news

In the wake of the tragic wildfires in Maui, residents of Ashland have questions for Ashland Fire & Rescue (AFR).

During the City Council meeting Tuesday, City Manager Joe Lessard handed off part of his manager’s report to AF&R Chief Ralph Sartain to address questions about evacuation planning and fire weather in the forecast.

He has received numerous emails circling around “What if” questions, he said. While the city and emergency responders can’t plan for every “what if?” scenario, he said, the city is working to protect residents.

“We will go through the area door to door, we will activate CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), we will do everything we can to get to our people. The police department will go through with bull horns … That’s the stuff the city will do, we will active the citizen alert system, we will activate our radio broadband, which is 1700 AM,” he said.

Sartain urged residents to take measures for their own safety, like signing up for Everbridge Alerts.

“People have to take responsibility for their own actions as well. I have a total of 39 firefighters and administrators for the city of Ashland, that is my entire fire department. We can’t be everywhere. Our minimum staffing is eight,” he said.

A group City Manager Joe Lessard termed the “Evacuation Taskforce” met recently for the first time. Reached by phone, Ashland’s Emergency Manager Kelly Burns said the Aug. 7 meeting included himself; Sartain; Marshall Rasor, deputy chief; Tighe O’Meara, police chief; Scott Fleury, public works director; and two representatives from the Oregon Department of Transportation — Jeremiah Griffin, ODOT District 8 manager and Bob Harshman, Ashland area transportation maintenance manager.

Burns said the group discussed who would be available to unlock the gates at the North Mountain Avenue emergency freeway entrance. The group also discussed if potential additional emergency freeway onramps could be developed.

Sartain said the wildland division is fully funded and he has authorized overtime for firefighters. During this week’s fire weather, the Oregon Department of Forestry and the Bureau of Land Management have suspended all vacations and instructed staff to stay available. Resources like bulldozers, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are also available, he said.  

Sydney Jenkins, fire and life safety specialist at AF&R, has recently obtained the certification to fly drones over the watershed to locate people who may be camping there and posing a fire risk, Sartain said.

AF&R has also added two new “single-roll” employees to improve its capacity respond to fires. Burns said the single-roll staff are fire department employees who only respond to medical calls. They began working a few weeks ago and are already making a difference.

“As a firefighter, you’re mostly running medical calls. …So many medical calls that we sometimes don’t have fire staff available when we do have fire calls,” he said.

Some Ashland residents have been active on social media discussing concerns surrounding evacuations. Richard Vezie, a retired building designer, said he has been studying Ashland’s evacuation plan for years.

Reached by phone, Vezie said he previously spoke at an Aug. 2, 2022, Ashland City Council meeting to urge the city to take note of its evacuation study. The study was commissioned through KLD Engineering, “to analyze estimated evacuation times,” according to the city of Ashland’s website. 

The study’s data showed it could take close to five hours to evacuate the entirety of Ashland, he said. The study does not include the recently added onramp at North Mountain Avenue.

“Burn through” or fast-moving fires could devastate Ashand in a little over an hour and these events have become frequent, he said, citing the Almeda Fire, the Camp Fire in Paradise, the Mill Fire in Weed and the Maui fires where his children barely escaped with their lives. 

“My daughter and son-in-law, they made it out with seconds to spare — they saw things no one wants to see, and that you cannot unsee. …I have friends and neighbors here. …I don’t want to terrify anybody, but I want to mobilize people,” Vezie said.  

Sartain encouraged Ashland residents to reach out to Ashand Fire & Rescue with any questions, “that’s what we’re here for,” he said.  

Email freelance writer Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].

Aug. 21 update: Updated CERT link.