University of Oregon and Lane County host first Oregon Summit on Wildfire Recovery
By: Jennifer Singh | Oct 30, 2023
EUGENE, Ore. – Hundreds of people are coming together from all over the state to talk about wildfire recovery more than three years after the devastating Labor Day wildfires of 2020. The University of Oregon School of Planning, Public Policy and Management and Lane County are hosting the first-ever Oregon Summit of Wildfire Recovery on October 30 and 31.
The University of Oregon School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management and Lane County are hosting the first Oregon Summit on Wildfire Recovery.
Thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of land were devastated across the state by the Labor Day wildfires of 2020. As Oregon heads into its fourth year of recovery from these wildfires, leaders, managers, and policymakers from across the state are gathering to assess progress and learn from each other.
Hosted at the Ford Alumni Center, the summit is hosting presentations and panel discussions covering innovative housing solutions, increasing community resilience, strengthening recovery capacity across the state, whole community recovery, and trauma-informed recovery.
“The impetus of this is to capture the things that they have learned over the past three years so we can make the next recovery work that much better because we know that this is not the last time that we’re going to be having wildfires or some other natural disaster hit our communities,” Benjamin Clark, School Director for the UO School of Planning, Public Policy and Management, said. “The more we can learn about what has gone right and what has gone wrong, that they will be able to adapt to that situation that comes up in the future.”
Steve Mokrohisky, Lane County Administrator, said recovery efforts are still crucial this many years after the fires.
“Once you get a few years out, which we are now, we start actually having an understanding of what’s happening and the ability to reflect on what’s done well, what could have gone better, and planning for the future,” Mokrohisky said. “We’re at a really good period of time now to start to connect with other communities across the state to understand how we can learn from each other and how we can continue to recover in these various fire-affected communities as best as possible.”
Mokrohisky said their partnership with the University of Oregon has been key in building more resilient communities across the state.
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Jennifer Singh joined the KEZI 9 News team in July 2023 as a news reporter. If you have any story ideas for Jennifer, you can email her at jsingh@kezi.com.