Last week, Benton County kicked off a series of important community meetings on water. This week, the county is launching what could be an equally important series of meetings on wildfire protection.

"Fire and Rain": It's almost as the county is taking its planning cues from the James Taylor songbook.

Actually, both the water and the wildfire efforts share a common genesis - and it's not tied to popular music. The sessions on ensuring adequate groundwater and this week's wildfire meetings are important, in part, because we assume that our soggy climate insulates us from both drought and wildfire.

Neither is a safe assumption any more.

In the words of Chris Bentley of the Benton County Community Development office, one of the leaders in the fire effort, people make this assumption: "We live in Oregon. Fires don't happen here."

But fires do happen here. And as we increasingly build houses in the area where forested land meets houses - the area foresters call the "wildland-urban interface" - we court danger.

The meetings give members of the public a chance to weigh in as the county and its consultants continue work on a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Bentley says the plan, when finished, should propose workable solutions to help reduce wildfire risk. It will identify areas of inadequate fire protection - and possibly even areas that have no organized fire protection at all. And it should offer landowners strategies to make their properties less vulnerable to wildfire.

The plan also is likely to address related issues, including how firefighters and their equipment can even get to structures at risk of wildfire.

As an example, Bentley talks about the challenges firefighters face when they're trying to back an engine some 600 feet down a narrow driveway that offers no place to turn around. That type of driveway isn't uncommon in Benton County. But the main goal is to get this conversation going before the fires do. As Bentley says: "So many communities wait until after the fact, and then they say, 'Dang; We should have thought about this.'''

If you go

Here's the schedule for this week's Community Wildfire Protection Plan community meetings:

Today: Monroe Fire Station, 680 Commercial St., 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday: Alsea Community Library, 19192 Alsea Highway, 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Wren, Community Hall, 35515 Kings Valley Highway, 6:30 p.m.

Thursday: Corvallis Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave., 2 p.m.

Thursday: Adair Village, Officers' Clubhouse, 6097 N.E. Ebony Lane, 6:30 p.m.

Can't make any of the meetings? For more information, call Chris Bentley at 541-766-6293.