State of Oregon After-Action Review for Wildland Fire and Wind Event—September 2020

Challenge:

On September 7th, multiple fires ignited under critically hot and dry conditions. On September 8th Governor Brown issued conflagration declarations for four fires. On September 9th, Governor Brown issued emergency conflagration declarations for the entire states. Additional state and declarations followed freeing up federal funding and resources to mitigate and respond to these fire events. On September 14th the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) closed all ODF-run forests. At the peak of firefighting efforts, there were more than 7,500 personnel from 39 states and five Canadian provinces assigned to fires in Oregon. At one-point, American Red Cross (ARC) had 15 open shelters, with almost 2,000 survivors in congregate shelters. Additionally, ARC housed 2,210 people in 1,170 hotel rooms. Ultimately, over 1,000,000 acres were burned, with approximately 40,000 people evacuated, and 500,000 people in evacuation warning areas. Given the nature and magnitude of this event it was determined there was a need to evaluate actions and decisions made during this event through an after-action review.

Solution:

Given the support EM Partners has been providing the State of Oregon for the COVID after-action review, the state determined that consistency was important for conducting the after-action review for the fire event. The focus of this after-action review was the overall response at the state enterprise level. EM Partners built a team that not only has experience in after-action reviews but more importantly experience in incident management, firefighting and emergency response; putting the right people on the project to meet the needs of the client. As part of the project we will be hosting and facilitating a virtual discussion with the key stakeholders at the state level. We will also reach out via survey to stakeholders within state agencies, local emergency managers, tribal leaders, health departments and others. We will conduct interviews and review several dozen documents.

Benefits:

The support EM Partners is providing to the State of Oregon provides consistency and perspective of the impacts of the fire along with ongoing pandemic. The support we are providing allows the state to focus on the on-going needs of the pandemic and recovery from the fires while at the same time see areas where improvement is needed and implementing those improvements in real time. Areas of improvement and best practices identified and developed through this review will allow for continued strengthening of Oregon’s enterprise response for this and future events.