On Tuesday April 14th Robert McCullough presented a lecture on Urban wildfire risks in Portland and the lessons learned from the Eaton wildfire.
Fifteen months ago, McCullough Research assisted the New York Times in the identification of the Easton Wildfire ignition point and supported additional research on possible faults that may have caused the disaster.
The distance from Portland’s second largest high risk fire zone, Oaks Bottom, to Reed College is only eight tenths of a mile. Not surprisingly, this raises the question whether Reed College may face wildfire risks in the future. The Eaton wildfire reached Altadena in less than thirty minutes. The fire crossed the one-mile distance from ignition to homes far more rapidly than sophisticated risk modelling had predicted.
Portland’s most critical high risk fire zone is Forest Park and the adjacent seven miles of petrochemical tank farms. A wildfire here would be catastrophic, but the population in the area is small. A fire in Oaks Bottom is adjacent to the Sellwood/Brooklyn neighborhoods and over twelve thousand homes. Another two thousand homes are in Eastmoreland.
Siloing of utilities, governments, and regional officials was a central concern with the LA wildfire. Even with advanced warning from the U.S. Weather Service, they were unprepared.
Portland has fewer resources and even less preparation. Our emergency plans are a decade out of date. Oaks Bottom has no sophisticated risk studies or Pano Ai ignition cameras to spot wildfires. PGE has two Pano AI cameras scanning Forest Park twenty-four hours a day. The rest of Portland has none.
Video:
Lecture Video, hosted by Reed College
Presentation:
Transcript:
Poster: