Douglas Electric powerline

A powerline stretches through the forest in Douglas County, Oregon. Douglas Electric Cooperative recently received a \$9.1 million Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CDWG) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service for its wildfire preparation plan. The CDWG program is available through Wildfire Risk to Communities (wildfirerisk.org), which uses LANDFIRE data to help evaluate fire risk. Douglas Electric used the funds to hire extra crews to trim trees outside its right-of-way that showed signs of insect damage or root rot and could potentially fall on powerlines, creating a fire danger. Outages due to falling trees have already dropped by 30 percent.