Our Approach

We believe that collaboration at the neighborhood level can significantly reduce Ashland’s wildfire risk and enhance evacuation safety. We are guided and motivated by Ashland’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (adopted in 2025) as well as widespread concerns that Ashland may experience a worse-than-usual fire season due to a dry winter with little snow. While we cannot solve our community wildfire risk issues in one season, we believe that a community resilience approach is a key ingredient in risk reduction and our ability to recover from a wildfire event (or other natural disaster).

Community resilience in emergency risk reduction is defined as  “a localized approach empowering neighborhoods to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disasters. It builds collective strength through social cohesion, shared resources, and proactive planning rather than relying solely on top-down government interventions.” (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

The Wildfire-Ready Neighborhoods initiative is a grassroots, peer-to-peer initiative that will evolve based on the needs of our participating neighborhoods. Here’s the basic program structure:

• Ashland residents sign up to become a Connector for their Neighborhood. Neighborhoods could be defined as one block of homes, or one multifamily apartment building, or a large HOA—whatever makes sense and is workable. Connectors will be responsible for leading an effort to gather key information in their neighborhoods to reduce wildfire risk and enhance evacuation safety.
• Connectors will be connected to each other via an email group, to be used exclusively for sharing wildfire-related resources and information and facilitating related conversations
• In-person and virtual meetings will be convened as needed to support neighborhood progress
• Connectors will receive timely, vetted resources to support their neighborhood goals on subjects such as community organizing, evacuation zones, suggested go-bag contents, case studies, community survey tools, home-hardening and fire-resistant landscaping recommendations, group project ideas, and more.
• Actions will be encouraged and supported, not mandatory.
• Neighborhoods just getting started will be encouraged to sign up to learn the basics of wildfire preparedness in an Introductory Better Prepared Neighborhood Intro Session conducted by CERT volunteers.
• Local experts and experienced neighborhood connectors will be invited to join the group conversations and/or meetings as needed.
• Meeting recordings and notes will be provided whenever possible for those who are unable to attend.

We are inspired in part by the Ashland Food Project (the “green bag pick-up”)— an Ashland-born open-source program that has since spread to over 50 communities nationally. The Ashland Food Project shows that neighbors working together can achieve amazing results. In 2025, the project’s 150 neighborhood coordinators brought in more than 183,000 community meals from more than 2,400 donating households. Wow!

We will evaluate the program at the end of the 2026 fire season to explore next steps for future fire seasons.

For more information, please contact us.