What Happens Here If the Roads Close?
What happens in the Illinois Valley if a major wildfire closes roads, an earthquake damages bridges, or the power goes out for several days?
That is a question we have been spending a lot more time thinking about.
For the past two years, Illinois Valley Family Coalition (IVFC) has been working with local, county, and state partners to develop the Family Resource Center into a community resilience hub. In practical terms, that means a place that can keep helping people access information, basic resources, and support when the systems we normally rely on are disrupted.
The idea is pretty simple.
Hundreds of people already come through our doors every month for food, public benefits, transportation assistance, hygiene resources, referrals, computer access, and other basic needs. During an emergency, we want that same familiar building to keep working when the community needs it most.
What a Resilience Hub Would Actually Do
We are not trying to become the valley's primary emergency shelter.
Josephine County has an agreement with Three Rivers School District that allows school facilities to be used for emergency sheltering when needed. IVFC sits immediately next to Illinois Valley High School and only a short distance from Lorna Byrne Middle School, putting us in a strong location to complement that broader shelter system.
Our role would be different.
During a prolonged outage, wildfire, earthquake, or other major emergency, IVFC could serve as a community resource point where people could:
Get accurate and vetted emergency information
Access food, water, hygiene supplies, and other basic resources
Charge phones and communication devices
Find out where shelters and emergency services are available
Get help coordinating transportation
Access restrooms, showers, and sanitation resources
Connect with county, state, nonprofit, and emergency response partners in one place
Josephine County Emergency Management has identified IVFC as particularly well positioned for this role because people already know the building, services already operate here every day, and we are close to potential school shelter locations.
Just as importantly, the County plans to continue including IVFC in emergency planning for the Illinois Valley.
Resources That Work on an Ordinary Tuesday
One of the things we like most about the resilience hub model is that many of the resources that matter during a disaster are useful every single day.
Our food pantry is the clearest example.
It now serves 600 to 700 households each month and has refrigerator and freezer capacity. During an emergency, that same infrastructure could become part of a much larger food distribution effort.
We recently signed a formal agreement with Cave Junction Adventist Community Services (CJACS) to strengthen emergency food and supply distribution throughout the Illinois Valley. CJACS operates another major food pantry in our community, and the agreement establishes a framework for sharing available supplies, coordinating transportation and distribution, and helping ensure food and other essentials reach people where they are needed most during a disaster.
We also have an on-site well, public restrooms, emergency food and water supplies, first aid equipment, and radios that can be used if normal communication systems are disrupted. We have expanded emergency storage inside the building and continue looking for ways to stage additional supplies locally.
Through our partnership with Illinois Valley Living Solutions, a mobile shower and laundry trailer now operates at IVFC each week. This same resource could provide an important source of sanitation and hygiene support during an extended emergency.
We have also established a formal partnership with Illinois Valley Fire District and the Illinois Valley Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) around IVFC's role as a community resilience hub.
Piece by piece, resources that serve people every day are becoming part of a larger emergency preparedness system.
Planning Before Something Happens
A resilience hub only works if organizations know how to work together before an emergency.
On August 27, IVFC hosted an Emergency Planning and Public Health Coordination Meeting with representatives from Josephine County Emergency Management, Josephine County Public Health, Illinois Valley Fire District, Illinois Valley CERT, Illinois Valley Living Solutions, Illinois Valley Wellness Resources, and the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), including its Office of Resilience and Emergency Management (OREM).
The conversation went well beyond IVFC. Partners discussed sheltering, transportation, sanitation, communications, medical needs, and what could happen if a major earthquake or wildfire isolated different parts of the Illinois Valley.
One of the clearest takeaways was that preparedness in a rural community like ours cannot depend on one building or organization. Resources already exist throughout the valley. The challenge is making sure we know what is available, where it is, and how to access it.
To help address this, IVFC is now coordinating with Rogue Valley Community Organizations Active in Disaster (RV COAD), a regional disaster preparedness, response, and recovery network, to build a shared inventory of emergency resources across Josephine County. Rather than maintaining a separate local list, we are working to connect local organizations to RV COAD's existing asset mapping system, where they can identify and update available facilities, equipment, supplies, transportation, personnel, and other resources.
This partnership also connects our local efforts with a much larger network of emergency response organizations and established workgroups focused on logistics, public health, communications, and disaster recovery.
Organizations interested in contributing to this effort can register with RV COAD to help identify resources that may be available during a disaster.
Our local group plans to continue meeting, with an emphasis on identifying gaps, coordinating resources, and developing practical plans for working together. We are also exploring a future tabletop exercise to test how these systems would function during an actual emergency.
Keeping the Lights On
The biggest infrastructure piece still ahead of us is power.
An emergency resource center is not much use during a long outage if the refrigerators shut off, the well pump stops, phones cannot charge, communications equipment goes down, and the building is dark.
Working with ODHS, OREM, and renewable energy partners, IVFC is developing a major solar and battery storage project designed to keep essential parts of the Family Resource Center operating during extended power outages.
The project would help protect food storage, maintain access to well water, and support communications, lighting, and other critical services when the community needs them most.
At an estimated $460,000, it would be the largest infrastructure project in IVFC's history, and an important step toward making the Resource Center a more dependable resource during emergencies.
Resilience Is Bigger Than One Building
We do not expect IVFC to solve emergency preparedness for the Illinois Valley.
That would miss the point.
A resilient community has many places, organizations, and people prepared to help. It has food and water stored in more than one location. It has ways to communicate when normal systems fail. It has neighbors who know what to do and organizations that already know how to work together.
That matters especially in a rural valley where damaged roads or bridges could mean outside assistance takes time to arrive.
Our goal is to make IVFC one strong piece of that larger system.
There is still plenty of work ahead. We need more storage, continued planning and training, stronger communications, more community education, and the funding needed to complete our solar and battery project.
But compared with where this work started, the pieces are beginning to connect.
We have partners at the table. We have a clearer role in county emergency planning. We're connecting local organizations to a regional emergency resource inventory, strengthening our communications capacity, and building relationships that will help us coordinate more effectively when something happens.
That is what becoming a resilience hub looks like for us.
Not one project or one building, but a long-term effort to make sure the Illinois Valley is better prepared to take care of one another when it matters most.
Three Things You Can Do This Month
Resilience is not something IVFC can build on its own. Some of the most important preparation happens at home.
Sign up for Josephine County emergency alerts. The County's Citizen Alert system provides important emergency notifications, including evacuation information. Make sure your household is registered and your contact information is current.
Learn about Illinois Valley CERT and local preparedness training. Our local Community Emergency Response Team offers opportunities to learn practical emergency preparedness and response skills, volunteer, and help neighbors when disaster strikes. IVCERT also partners with IV Wellness Resources to host regular training exercises. Visit IV Wellness Resources FaceBook page to view current classes.
Make a household emergency plan. Oregon's Be 2 Weeks Ready program has free resources to help you prepare for extended disruptions. Identify evacuation routes, make a transportation and shelter plan, and talk with family and neighbors about how you will stay connected if roads close or communications fail.
IVFC is also building out our Emergency Resources page, where Illinois Valley residents can find links to official alerts, wildfire information, shelter resources, and other emergency services.
If you want to talk with us about emergency preparedness or how your organization could be part of this work, call (541) 592-6139, email info@ivfc.org, or stop by 535 E River Street in Cave Junction.
