Clackamas County Disaster Management
Newsletter July 2025
Greetings from the Clackamas County Disaster Management Team!
We are now launching a quarterly newsletter, with June as our first issue!
In This Newsletter Edition:
A Message from our Director

Last year Oregon saw a record-breaking wildfire season. This year we have already seen a fire significantly impact the Rowena community and it's just the beginning of a forecasted bad wildfire season. Every fire season can certainly increase anxiety and bring up memories from the 2020 wildfire season.
While I certainly feel uneasy as the season starts, I'm also optimistic and hopeful. Every year Clackamas County and its partners continue to strengthen their response capabilities. The wildfire exercise series and ClackGo preparedness messaging included here are just two examples. It also includes increasing our partnership with the Clackamas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) and the Clackamas Amateur Radio Emergency Services (CARES). In addition, Disaster Management was able to use grant funding to partner with Clackamas Fire to support fuels reduction and staff support for the Clackamas Wildfire Partnership. The County has also invested in increasing the collaboration and communication tools of the Emergency Operations Center.
Even as the county is entering this fire season, we are already scoping planning projects to prepare for next year's fire season. These include: another exercise series, further documenting and implementing our evacuation planning to include animal and livestock evacuation, and adding to the ClackGo Prepared materials and website, all while building relationships with current partners and finding new ones.
Every fire season can cause some anxiety and require vigilance, but I hope you can feel a little optimism this year in the preparations the county and its partners have taken. I also invite you to join us in the preparation by going to clackgoprepared.org and either starting or continuing your preparedness journey.
If you are interested in learning more about this year's or next year's preparedness, please reach out to Disaster Management at CCDM@clackamas.us.
- Daniel Nibouar
Spring Into Safety

Clackamas County Hosts Wildfire Evacuation Exercise Series with Local and Regional Partners
As wildfire season approaches, Clackamas County and its regional partners took coordinated steps to strengthen community readiness. Through a three-day Wildfire Evacuation Exercise Series held this spring, more than 40 departments and agencies across local, state, and federal levels came together to rehearse, evaluate, and enhance their wildfire evacuation response capabilities.
- Day 1: Evacuations, Alert & Warning
- Day 2: Emergency Operations Center Activation
- Day 3: Public Information and Joint Information System Operations
This exercise series brought together a diverse mix of responders and support agencies—from fire districts and emergency managers to utility companies, law enforcement, and communications teams. Participating organizations included Clackamas Fire, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, National Weather Service, Portland General Electric, Oregon Department of Forestry, and many other critical partners.
The series not only examined operational coordination but also strengthened the relationships and shared understanding that form the backbone of regional disaster response. Through scenario-based collaboration, Clackamas County and its partners advanced their preparedness posture and reaffirmed their commitment to protecting lives, property, and natural resources during fire season.
#ClackGo Prepared Evacuation Planning
Recent disasters have highlighted the need for predefined evacuation zones to be used in emergencies to quickly delineate and communicate evacuation levels, avoiding the need to define new evacuation level boundaries in reaction to an emergency. To respond to this need, the County has identified and refined evacuation zones and routes as part of an all-hazard approach to evacuation planning.
Clackamas County Disaster Management is in the third and final phase of Evacuation Planning, focused on community engagement and a public communication campaign. This portion of the project aims to gather information about how Clackamas County residents are seeking information, the best ways to share time sensitive information with them, and attitudes toward disaster preparedness.
Clackamas County Disaster Management will share this evacuation preparedness information with the public as part of a campaign beginning May 27th.
Be ClackGO Prepared! Our community is stronger when we prepare together.
- Sign up for Public Alerts
- Know your routes! Evacuation Planning Maps will be made available to the public, hosted on the county website.
- Build your ClackGO kit Begin pulling together a GO Kit in case they have to evacuate. We will provide a succinct check-list of items to include and consider.
We will be giving away check lists, stickers, first aid kits, flashlights, headlamps, and other ClackGO kit materials to help get people started at local community events.
We will be asking the public to share photos of themselves on social with the #ClackGOKit, to be entered into a drawing to win more expensive items to add to their go kit.
Trainings and Exercises
Questions? Suggestions?
Please contact Carolyn Bonoff at cbonoff@clackamas.us.