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After recent disasters, Clackamas County identified the need to conduct evacuation planning that considers the impact of multiple hazards on the community’s transportation networks.
This Evacuation Planning work has taken place over 2 ½ years, in 3 Phases:
Phase I: Baseline Assessment and Best Practices
The first phase of the project, conducted in 2023, developed a GIS-based Risk Factory Inventory and identified potential evacuation zones and routes. The Risk Factory Inventory considered roadway data, land use, hazard data, demographic information, natural features, and key community uses. Preliminary zones and routes were created at the conclusion of this phase.
Phase II: Evacuation Zone and Route Mapping
The second phase of the project sought engagement from local partners to validate and refine the evacuation zones and routes, and to inform strategies for introducing the zones and routes to the general public. It included work sessions with local public agencies and community partners. Clackamas County identified and engaged key partners to ensure local jurisdictions and subject-matter experts were included in the review process. This created a shared understanding between local, regional, and state agencies of the evacuation planning needs in Clackamas County. It also ensures that evacuation protocols across jurisdictional boundaries are considered. In February of 2024 evacuation planning maps and routes were finalized.
Phase III: Public Engagement and Evacuation Preparedness Education Campaign
The third phase of this project occurred during Winter- Summer 2025, and was focused on gathering community feedback about evacuation preparedness to then inform the public education campaign. The County sought feedback from residents through a public survey, focus groups in rural communities, and 1:1 interviews with community leaders; all conducted in both English and Spanish. The County learned residents’ preferred communication channels to share information during incidents, better understood the publics’ knowledge about personal evacuation planning, and identified resource gaps about preparedness for potential evacuations. All this work has culminated in a public evacuation preparedness campaign- Be ClackGO Prepared- which launched in May 2025.
