Smoke Ready Communities

Some communities experience regular smoke events (some of which may originate from prescribed fire), while others may experience smoke less frequently. Wildfire smoke can travel hundreds of miles and can impact the air quality and public health of communities far from a fire. It is critical that communities have partnerships, infrastructure, response frameworks and communication plans in place before a smoke event.

On this page:

• Resources by Audience
• Defining a Smoke Ready Community
• Steps to Becoming Smoke Ready
• Examples of Smoke Plans 
• Additional Resources

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Resources by Audience

• Frequent Questions About Wildland Fire Smoke for Individuals

  Answers to common questions about what you can do to protect you and your family's health during a smoke event. 

  Review the information

• Frequent Questions About Wildland Fire Smoke Community Response

  Information about wildland fire community preparedness and response.

  Learn about smoke preparedness

• Resources for Community Leaders

  Resources for community leaders experiencing wildland fire smoke, including factsheets, radio scripts, and social media messaging about smoke. 

  Explore the resources

Defining a Smoke Ready Community

A smoke ready community is prepared and resourced to respond to wildland fire smoke events, ensuring that the public is informed, protected, and able to take necessary actions to safeguard their health, including accessing cleaner indoor air. A smoke ready community will assess vulnerabilities in advance, plan for and take action during a smoke event, and continuously evaluate and improve smoke-readiness plans. 

Steps to Becoming Smoke Ready

1. Establish a wildland fire smoke team and develop an organizational structure (i.e., define roles and responsibilities). 

2. Assess community smoke risk and establish situational awareness (i.e., how likely is the community to be impacted by smoke, duration, frequency, how prepared is the community, who will be most impacted, local air quality data available – and gaps). 

3. Identify priority partners to engage (e.g., service providers, communication channels) and key audiences (e.g., at-risk populations, health care providers). 

4. Establish a smoke literacy and infrastructure baseline (i.e., determine what the community knows about smoke).  

5. Develop a plan to build or supplement infrastructure (e.g., portable air cleaner and mask distribution, identification of cleaner air spaces) and local capacity to address exposure to smoke (e.g., identification of funding sources for indoor air interventions, communications, etc.). 

6. Develop a communication strategy and set up information delivery methods. 

7. Design outreach materials that identify specific actions to reduce health impacts of smoke. 

8. Develop an after-action review to evaluate success. 

Examples of Smoke Plans

Beginning in 2021, EPA conducted the Smoke-Ready Communities Research Project in partnership with two county level public and environmental health departments - Garfield County, Colorado and the City of Butte and Silver Bow County, Montana.

Examples of smoke response plans are included below:

• Butte Silver Bow County Public Health Response for Wildfire Smoke Events (2022 (pdf) (2.0 MB)
• Public Health – Seattle & King County  Wildfire Smoke Response Plan (2024) (pdf)  (589 MB)
• Wildfire Smoke Air Pollution Emergency Plan for Sacramento (2022) (pdf) (8.7 MB)
• City of Ashland Community Response Plan for Smoke  (2020) (pdf)  (3.0 MB)
• Multnomah County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (2023 (pdf) (14.9 MB)
• Garfield County Wildfire Smoke Preparedness Plan (2023) (pdf) (1.4 MB)

Additional Resources