Many Communities Need Help Preparing For Wildfire, OSU Notes

There are 400 communities in the Northwest that are at higher risk of wildfire damage, because they have social vulnerabilities.  Oregon State University researcher Andy McEvoy used CDC data to identify those areas.

"Communities that are less able to generate their own tax dollars and those kinds of things that would pay for infrastructure updates or wildfire management professionals or fuel reduction, that kind of thing," he said.

McEvoy developed a tool that shows where these communities exist across the country.  He said it can help local, state and federal planners.

"It has applicability to a lot of different decision makers," McEvoy noted." Certainly community planners, emergency planners, also the legislatures, state land management agencies, Oregon Department of Forestry, federal agencies."

They can use the information to direct grants and other wildfire prevention resources to those communities.  If a fire does hit those areas, it's also more difficult for residents to recover.

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