November Club Meeting

Flying Pie Pizza     7804 SE Stark Street Portland, OR 97215      Google Map

Brian Ballou is the fire prevention specialist and spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Southwest Oregon District. While wildfires are headline news from June through September, fire prevention goes on year-round in Oregon’s sunny southwest corner. Teaching landowners who live in wildfire-prone areas about how to make their homes and landscapes less vulnerable to wildfire is a never-ending job, and Mr. Ballou’s background as a wildland firefighter comes into play daily when he’s rendering advice. He started his career in 1972 with the U.S. Forest Service as a member of a brush disposal crew on the Willamette National Forest. By the end of the 1970s, he was a squad boss on the Rogue River Hotshot Crew, and traveled to wildfires throughout the West. After earning a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon in the 1980s, Mr. Ballou joined the Oregon Department of Forestry’s public affairs staff, specializing in interpreting fire behavior and forest practices. He has now been the face of fire protection in southwest Oregon for nine years, and champions both wildfire prevention and wildfire acceptance. The unique forests and prairies of southwest Oregon were shaped by fire and fire will continue as an annual, occasionally spectacular agent of change. Mr. Ballou enjoys the challenge of teaching residents and visitors how to co-exist in an area where wildfire is as dynamic as the rivers and mountains