Harney County receives air cleaners in local, state and federal effort to curb wildfire smoke exposure

SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) — State and federal agencies are working together to bring air monitors and temporary air cleaners to schools in Harney County, which has experienced the most days of unhealthy air of any Oregon county due to wildfire smoke this year. 

The air cleaners are helping clear smoke from classrooms and other indoor school spaces when students are inside the buildings.

“Our county is large, and we have these tiny rural schools in every corner,” Kelly Singhose, Harney County’s interim public health co-director, explained. “To make decisions about their students’ exposure to smoke, they need air quality data from right where they are.”

To do that, the U.S. Forest Service provided six air monitors in the county, quickly increasing the total number of USFS monitors deployed in the county to seven — “resources we couldn’t have gotten on our own,” Singhose said. The USFS air monitors are placed throughout the county.

The air cleaner and air monitor distribution effort developed during interagency wildfire smoke coordination calls the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Air Program and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) Health Security, Preparedness and Response Section (HSPR) host. Other agencies represented on the calls include Oregon Department of Emergency Management (OEM), Oregon Department of Human Services Office of Resilience and Emergency Management (ODHS-OREM), Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), and local and tribal health. 

“After Harney County made the ask July 31, everyone chipped in to make this happen,” said Gabriela Goldfarb, OHA’s Environmental Public Health Section manager. In addition to the USFS air monitors, ODHS provided four large air cleaners, and DEQ is providing $5,000 in grant funding, she said.

Such collaborations have become increasingly routine summertime activities, with multiple counties benefiting from air quality advisories DEQ issues. Still, other communities, such as Lane and Josephine counties, received resource support in previous years during severe smoke events.

While home air filters have become more accessible to communities suffering from poor air quality, funding, staffing and the need to balance responses to multiple climate-related events, such as extreme heat and wildfire smoke, continue to be challenges, making coordination critical.

Harney County placed two of the four air scrubbers at the local hospital and a senior center that became a cleaner air center. As the first day of school approached, the health department arranged for schools to receive the remaining two scrubbers, which can clean large spaces, like school gymnasiums. The county has procured additional filters through a public-private partnership. 

The interagency wildfire smoke calls are intended to foster coordination on development of air quality advisories using knowledge from federal, state and local agencies. Information about air quality and advisories can be found on the Oregon Smoke Blog.