THE APPLEGATE FIRE PLAN: 
WHAT IS IT?

As we said in our initial paragraph, this project is about writing a strategic plan. An Oversight team made up of one representative from each of the nineteen "partners" and three community members will: consolidate all existing federal, state and community fire plans and associated information for the Applegate; update existing and obtain any new data needed (especially for private lands); identify special habitats and other high values at risk; and then develop a prioritized fire hazard reduction / fire suppression strategy. This new strategy will meet all requirements that our local agencies need in order to comply with their particular organization's land management regulations and procedures. 

This is a lot of stuff to cover! There are so many aspects to include that we have set up several teams to address the different components. We'll have people gathering together all of the existing data. An "interdisciplinary" or ID team, made up of forestry and fire experts as well as biologists, botanists, GIS and range experts, and community members will review and analyze this data. Strategies will be discussed and presented to the Oversight committee for decisions regarding theories, scope and direction. We'll have a professional writer working with the ID team to put everything down on paper. Specialists will be drawing maps from the new information received. 

We'll also have a Community team, composed of about twelve representatives from around the watershed who are interested in this project and are ready to spread the word to their neighbors. Several members of this group will sit on the Oversight and the ID teams, giving their personal input as the Plan develops. They'll also work with the two County Emergency Management folks and local fire departments to develop an emergency communication plan that we can set in place for every neighborhood or community across the watershed.

Our Plan will address fuel hazard reduction, fire protection and suppression, and emergency community communications, and it will lay out a list of projects for on-the-ground work for next year and for several years thereafter. It will provide residents with methods to utilize on their own land to reduce fuels buildup, as well as resources for obtaining additional information as needed. It will provide residents of each neighborhood in the watershed with a localized version of the emergency communication plan. 

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

Our "project" includes a little bit more than this written Plan: 
We have a pair of demonstration projects that we'll use to enlighten you and your neighbors on how and why this neighborhood approach can be utilized to make your area more safe. Rural #9 Fire District, residents of Ruch's China Gulch area and the BLM joined together last year to reduce manzanita brush fields around their homes, because they were all concerned about high fire risks. And, in the Upper Applegate on another China Gulch, residents are this Fall teaming up with both the BLM and the US Forest Service to do the same thing. This project should be ready for on-the-ground work by next Spring. So, any interested groups of neighbors can request "field trips" to either of these areas to see what teamwork can accomplish.

Also, as we were planning this project and looking for backing, we heard a lot of eagerness to hear how our "partnership" venture worked. People want to know if this many agencies can really work together, whether community members can provide meaningful input into the process, whether this size watershed is the "right" size for this venture. So, your two project coordinators will be documenting the process as we go along, noting what does and doesn't work, and why. We'll put this into a "model project" report, for lack of a better name, that other communities throughout the West can use in their future endeavors. 

The main focus of our public outreach is to increase awareness among the residents of the Applegate regarding fire management. We'll use our watershed councils and our community team to help spread the word. They will also help develop long-term monitoring projects to validate or update practices that we implement. After periodic re-evaluations, new projects will be developed to continue our work to new areas of the watershed.

We're hoping to be able to begin implementation of the components by late next Spring. Funding for on-the-ground work has already been requested for next year. This will be a very long-term project, but we know it's going to be worth it.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH:
IT'S CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS! 

The community outreach component of the Applegate Fire Plan is one of the essential ac-tivities that will determine the success or failure of this comprehensive valley-wide fuels and fire hazard reduction strategy. We plan to provide a number of opportunities over the next eight months for residents of the Applegate to learn more about our Fire Plan, to communicate your ideas and concerns, and to participate in many various ways.

Over 30% of the land in the Applegate is privately owned, and that's a significant piece of the pie! Without a dramatic increase of voluntary participation by private landowners, we will continue to have large blocks of land in the low to mid-elevation ranges of the valley rated in the "high fire risk" category. The more lands that are treated for fuels reduction, the better our chances of reducing the number and intensity of catastrophic fire events in our valley. 

This strategic Fire Plan will provide the residents of the Applegate with a written descrip-tion of how to reduce fuels hazards around your homes and across your properties. It will provide maps of neighborhoods, showing where work needs to be done (such as along a roadside…). It will provide lists of local workers who can help with on-the-ground work, ideas on how to apply for reimbursement for doing work, who to call with questions. It will also address our overall wa-tershed-wide plans and strategies - where are the most overgrown areas where agencies might be doing work of their own? Where are the federal agencies working to reduce fuels and what types of treatments are they doing, when. How often will we need to go back and re-thin an area? 

There's another component of our Applegate Fire Plan that is also noteworthy for resi-dents, and that's our Emergency Community Communications Plan (we haven't found a shortened name for this yet). This is still being developed, but it will be a way for neighborhoods or commu-nities to communicate together in times of natural disasters such as fires and floods. Telephone trees, lists of who has what livestock that needs to be accounted for, who has extra stalls and horse trailers, etc. The folks of Yale Creek and Little Applegate worked together to form a system last August during the Quartz Fire, and both the community and the fire fighters were astounded at how valuable these efforts were! 

We know that some neighborhoods have done some organizing in this regard, and we'll expand on this work so that the whole valley is connected and ready for anything! (We'll use what is called a 6th field watershed scale for this neighborhood planning - an example is Yale or Humbug Creek.) The County Departments of Emergency Management and local Fire Departments will be taking the lead on this part of our project, and we'll use our community team (plus anyone else who is interested) to cover all the bases. (see next page for more information)

We have identified a number of neighbors throughout the valley that are interested in spearheading this very important community outreach action. These folks will be available in their respective neighborhoods to gather both your questions and concerns and at the same time help plan and provide information on future neighborhood Fire Plan meetings. Three members of this community outreach committee (*) will also participate on the technical team to bring the com-munity perspective to the planning table and assist with the actual crafting of the plan. 
Our first round of public meetings are scheduled for late November and early December in six different neighborhoods across the valley. Please refer to the dates, times and places of these meetings located on the back page of this paper. We propose to have a second round of commu-nity meetings in midwinter and a final round in the spring. Each group of meetings will be preceded by another special edition of this publication to announce the meetings and share the progress of plan development. 

The first round of fire plan meetings will provide an overview of the current fire conditions and how we got into this difficult situation. We'll identify your 6th field neighborhoods, have pres-entations from our agency partners such as local fire districts, county emergency services, or Ore-gon Department of Forestry. There will be ample opportunity to ask questions, give us ideas, and review the unique opportunities that are ahead of us both as neighborhoods and valley wide.

We are continually looking for more people and ideas to increase the community outreach part of this planning process. If you have any ideas or are interested in getting involved, come to one of our meetings, contact the community outreach volunteer nearest you or call our Fire Plan office at the Applegate District Ranger Station, (541) 899-3853.

For more information contact Applegate Partnership Board members:

Jack Shipley, 846-6917 
E-mail: rockycreekfarms@terragon.com

Sandy Shaffer, 899-9541
E-mail: dnsshaff@internetcds.com

Applegate Partnership Meetings