District Description The District has contracts to provide services for Gladstone Fire Department and Sandy Fire District. The City of Gladstone entered into an Intergovernmental Agreement with Clackamas Fire District on July 1, 2022, which terminated on July 1, 2023. This agreement shall automatically be renewed for two consecutive two-year terms. Sandy Fire Districted entered into a full contract for seven years of service with Clackamas Fire District effective July 1, 2023.

CFD is one of the largest fire protection districts in Oregon, proudly serving over 300,000 residents in an area covering nearly 300 square miles of urban, suburban, and rural communities. The District provides fire, rescue, and emergency medical services to the cities of Happy Valley, Johnson City, Milwaukie, and Oregon City, as well as the unincorporated communities of Barton, Beavercreek, Boring, Carus, Carver, Central Point, Clackamas, Clarkes, Damascus, Eagle Creek, Holcomb, Oak Lodge, Redland, South End, Sunnyside, and Westwood. As of 2026 CFD provides fire protection for the cities of Sandy and Gladstone through annexation.

CFD staff of career and volunteer firefighters and paramedics respond to over tens of thousands of incidents annually from 25 fire stations located strategically throughout the fire district. CFD is an internationally accredited agency meeting the highest standards in emergency service delivery.

Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Many areas covered by CFD are excellent examples of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). They are characterized by suburban communities and rural residential homes surrounded by heavy fuels and steep slopes. In addition, many of the neighborhoods have limited access with narrow, steep driveways and poor water supplies.

The more rural wildland urban interface areas exist in the District's southern, southeastern, and eastern protection service areas. These rural interface areas are best defined as a mixed interface in which small to medium sized neighborhoods have been built on lands formerly used for a variety of farm use applications.

In the more urban areas, heavy and continuous fuels dominate many of the parks and natural areas surrounding the communities, so fires that begin on public land or on smaller private residential lots can quickly threaten communities and natural resources that thrive in the cities of Milwaukie, Happy Valley, and Oregon City and the communities of Clackamas, Oak Grove, and Jennings Lodge. In addition, response times from rural fire stations could be delayed, which underscores the need for community preparedness in the wildland urban interface.

Structural Ignitability CFD promotes the creation of defensible space, use of fire-resistant roofing and building materials, and community preparedness in the WUI. CFD works well with the Cities of Milwaukie, Oregon City, Happy Valley, and Johnson City and Clackamas County to integrate these concepts at the regulatory level by participating in land use reviews for new development to provide input on access and water supply.

The area served by CFD has a great deal of development in urban areas, making it difficult to make specific recommendations and make site visits to confirm compliance with the guidelines set forth in the Zoning and Development Ordinance. This need to build capacity for rural development is included in the CFD Action Plan.

Emergency Response A major wildland urban interface fire in CFD may exceed the immediate resources and capabilities of the District. For this reason, CFD has mutual aid agreements in place to allow for the sharing of resources across the county in the event of a large-scale disaster such as a wildfire.

In the event of a large wildland fire, evacuations may be necessary. The rural residential areas present some challenges for evacuations due to access constraints including long, narrow, and steep driveways with poor addressing. CFD has been working with ODF to improve address signage in vulnerable areas and will continue to work with the Clackamas Wildfire Collaborative to implement address signage in the Communities at Risk. Many of the identified communities at risk have only one point of egress, making it difficult to manage incoming and outgoing traffic during an emergency.

CFD follows DEQ burning policies for backyard burning. The majority of the cities covered by CFD are within the DEQ burn ban area, which does not allow backyard burning at any time of the year. In the more rural areas that allow burning, CFD tries to be consistent with debris burning policies set forth by the Fire Defense Board during fire season.

CFD employs over 267 career and 70 volunteer firefighters who receive regular wildland fire training to remain current on qualifications. Although the District is able to support classroom training, lack of live- fire experience has made it difficult at times to maintain wildland qualifications. New staff members who have little to no live-wildland fire experience have difficulty completing task books without being deployed on conflagrations. For this reason, CFD has been working with NAFT in support of the Metro Area Wildland School hosted by Molalla Fire annually in June, exploring training options with the USFS, and utilizing the experience gained from State conflagration deployment of task forces and members on State overhead teams. Since 2020, the District also employs a full-time seasonal type 2 crew and has updated their wildland records management system. Both of these actions have significantly increased their response capacity.