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|  | | Keno Fire Department | | Fire EMS Rescue |
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| | | | Fuels Reduction and Defensible Space
We cannot always prevent a wildfire from occurring, but we can take steps to prevent a wildfire from destroying our homes. Much of the Keno community is surrounded by forests, which is why it is especially important to create a defensible space around your home to protect it. Defensible space is the area between a house and an oncoming wildfire where the vegetation has been modified to reduce the wildfire threat. It provides an opportunity for firefighters to effectively defend and potentially save a home from burning to the ground. Sometimes defensible space is simply a homeowner's properly maintained backyard, while in other situations it involves removing trees and substantial amounts of brush and shrubs.
Ultimately it is the landowner's responsibility to maintain his/her property and keep it cleared of fuels that could ignite or feed a wildfire. However, because of the dense forested areas surrounding a majority of the homes in Keno, the fire department has helped landowners with fuels reduction by sending crews out in the summer to thin trees, eliminate ladder fuels, and clear brush in areas where the job is simply too big for the landowner. The fire department has also done fuels reduction work on public lands that abut private properties, creating an even larger defensible space.
For detailed information about creating a defensible space around your home, see the Living With Fire website, which has suggestions of things you can do before, during and after a wildfire, as well as links to many helpful publications.
Structure Assessments
In addition to fuels reduction work, Keno Fire Department has also completed structure assessments for all the homes in the district. These assessments answer a variety of questions about the construction of the home, the fuels surrounding the home, and how accessible the home is to large firefighting apparatus. The answers to these questions provide an overall rating of how safe the structure would be if a wildfire were to come through the area. All the structures are linked to a map using a GPS location so that if a wildfire occurs, firefighters can instantly see where all the homes in the area are located and which homes are more dangerous to defend than others.
We have generated reports for each structure assessed that detail the questions asked and give suggestions for how to make improvements on the property. If you are interested in obtaining a report for your home, please call the station at 541-883-3062 and leave a message with your name and physical address. (Please note that the majority of the assessments were completed in the summer of 2006, with updates added in 2010 for newly constructed homes. If you have made considerable changes to your home and property since then, they may not be reflected in the report.)
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