Volunteers and local service providers are helping people remove belongings and find help as they are displaced from the area near China Hat Road. (Joe Kline/The Bulletin file)

If federal officials don’t deal with fire danger and hazardous materials in the national forest close to Bend, they don’t deserve to be in charge of the forest.

If federal officials don’t adequately assist people living in that forest to find safe places to live, they don’t deserve to be in charge of the forest.

The eviction of campers from the China Hat area is a collision of what should be done and what not to do.

The Forest Service plans to conduct prescribed burns, clean up hazardous materials and more in the area near Bend. It must do so to reduce danger to people living in Bend, to the people living in the forest, and to the forest itself.

Prescribed burns are not a silver bullet. There will always be fire danger. Backed by strong winds, wildfire is not going to be stopped by prescribed burns. Yet, it is still one of the best tools for reducing wildfire risk so close to the city. As many firefighters in the area will say, Central Oregon remains one very bad, windy day away from terrible loss to wildfire.

Nobody wants mass removals of homeless people, especially when there is no good place for them to go. And there is not sufficient housing or safe camping alternatives for everyone displaced from the China Hat. But if there was a wildfire in that area, little to nothing could be done to save the lives of the people camping there.

It’s a false narrative to suggest that the Forest Service did not meet with service providers to try to make the best of this removal.

There were multiple meetings between the Forest Service and service providers for the homeless about China Hat. For a year. The Forest Service consulted with service providers on the language used in the flyers to make sure they would be readily understood. The Forest Service consulted with service providers about whether or not the campers should be displaced multiple times, within areas of the forest, or if it would be better to move them all at once. To reduce trauma, the recommendation was to do it all at once.

The threat of wildfire near Bend is a crisis. More action must be taken to reduce that risk and fast. Homelessness is a crisis. More action must be taken to find people places to live. The removal of the campers at China Hat with no good place for them to go is a societal failure — and so would be doing nothing to reduce wildfire risk so close to Bend.