Katie Gibble, Ashland’s Fire Adapted Communities Coordinator

Families in the Ashland School District are currently eligible to apply for a free room air purifier.

The City of Ashland secured a grant from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to protect our most vulnerable citizens from the effects of smoke by supplying free HEPA-grade room air purifiers to those who qualify.

Whether smoke is from wildfires or from our own controlled burns that are an important tool for managing our watershed, smoke particulates can be removed using a room air purifier.

ASD student families must apply before 5:00 p.m.

On Friday, July 17th.

And stormwatch 12 weather with chief meteorologist matt hoffman."

The ashland school district are currently eligible to apply for a free room air purifier.

Joining me now is kate gimbel ashlyn's fire adapted communities coordinator.

So for those who don't know what is an air purifier?

Yeah, an air purifier, or as we call them to clarify a standalone air purifier is a filtration system that you plug into your wallet at home.

Um, and it purifies the air of a single room in your home.

Usually somewhere between 300 and 500 square feet.

And so if you have smoke or other particulate matter, floating around in the airspace around your home running.

One of these air purifiers reduces the particulate matter in the air and makes a cleaner airspace in a room of your home.

All seeing what fire season is like here in southern oregon.

So how will one of these air purifiers help during fire season?

Well, as we start to really progress into fire season and we begin to see more fires occurring throughout the region, as you're probably all too familiar with, we will see some of that smoke coming into the rogue valley potentially.

And so when that happens, we encourage people to create some sort of clean airspace inside of their home.

So that way.

They're reducing the inflammation or aggravation to your lungs.

And so these standalone air purifiers will be a great option for folks that receive them, uh, to create that clean airspace as it starts to get smoky.

If it does get smoky this fire season, how important is it to create that clean airspace?

Well, for folks that have preexisting conditions like copd or asthma or other heart or lung conditions, as well as children that are developing still, their lungs are still growing and developing as well as the elderly folks over the age of 65, particularly.

Those folks are more vulnerable to smoke than others.

And so by creating that clean air space, you're doing a world of good for those folks that would otherwise be susceptible to needing to go to the doctor or the hospital for conditions that are inflamed by smoke.

So who qualifies for one of these air purifiers?

That's a really good question.

You know, you already noted that students, um, have families at the ashland school district are eligible.

Um, but anyone over the age of 65, um, households with children under the age of 15 with particular emphasis on households with children under the age of five, um, as well as households that have residents with preexisting conditions, like those that i listed.

Copd asthma, preexisting lung and heart conditions are all eligible to apply.

We, what we've done, um, as the ashland fire and rescue is we've gone to ours.

Our local partners that represent these smoke vulnerable populations, including the ashlynn senior center.

I'm a santee ashland school district options for helping residents of ashland.

So student and family housing, amongst many others, and have said, please advertise this program to your residents because those are the folks that connect with these smoke vulnerable residents the most.

And so while we've already advertised.

Through those agencies and entities, anyone within the community of ashland who has one of those preexisting conditions or is otherwise over the age of 65 or has had children under the age of 15 are all.

Eligible to apply.

And i also want to note that, um, folks with lower income are even more encouraged to apply because these standalone air purifiers, you can buy them at a hardware store or at a big box store.

And they usually cost somewhere between 130 and $250.

Um, and folks in the lower income bracket who may not otherwise be able to afford one of these air purifiers are certainly our target audience.

So how can someone listening to this?

How can they apply?

Good question.

So all you need to do is go to smoke wise, ashland.org and up at the top will be a tab that says smoke air purifier program.

And anyone that clicks on that can go in and apply wash and do, how necessary is it to have one of these during fire season or just to have one in general for that matter?

It certainly helps with just general aggravation to your lungs, even even lower levels of smoke.

Um, if you're familiar with the air quality index, otherwise known as the aqi, uh, in my particular case, anything above 100, i really start to feel it in my lungs.

And so, you know that that's aggravating your lungs, but as you move higher and higher into the aqi during particularly bad times, smoke.

It is important to find a clean airspace, whether that's you running your hvac system with a merv air purifier installed in your system or running one of these standalone air purifiers or else finding a space that has clean air is really important, especially when we have prolonged periods of smoke.