Last year’s wildfire season was one of the worst in recent Pacific Northwest history. More than 1,000 fires were recorded in Oregon alone. The September 2017 Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia Gorge burned upwards of 48,000 acres, disrupting communities in Washington and Oregon and damaging scores of popular recreation areas in the heart of the Gorge’s waterfall corridor.
Now that wildfire season is back, tensions are high. According to numerous studies, the region will see increasingly drier summers due to climate change. Already in 2018, the Gorge has seen several blazes and the Substation fire east of The Dalles grew to over 70,000 acres in just a couple of days. These fires have inspired a remarkable public outpouring of support for protecting and stewarding the Gorge and supporting its communities.
Join us Aug. 30 at Hood River's Columbia Center for the Arts for the first in a pair of community forums organized by Friends of the Columbia Gorge around the anniversary of the Eagle Creek fire. We'll examine progress made over the past year and explore the policies needed to strengthen future wildfire resilience for the land, communities, and trails that make the Gorge such a special place.
The evening will feature presentations from a panel of experts with on-the-ground experience over the past year in Eagle Creek fire recovery efforts and Gorge fire ecology research. The event also will feature a tabling fair and special screening of documentaries made by White Salmon and Hood River middle school students about the impacts of the Eagle Creek fire on the forest, trails and communities of the Gorge.
