REGION
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2022
THE OBSERVER — A3
Property owners may bear brunt of new fi re risk law
Oregon’s new approach
worries some rural
property owners
Others concerned about
potential eff ects
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Wes
Morgan is an enthusiastic sup-
porter of the eff ort to protect Ore-
gon’s rural homes from wildfi re.
His own, for instance.
Morgan, who is chief of the
Powder River Rural Fire Pro-
tection District, an all-volunteer
agency with a station just out-
side Sumpter, has endeavored to
reduce the risk of fi re on his prop-
erty among the ponderosa pines
of Sumpter Valley.
He maintains a lush green
lawn as an eff ective fi re break.
He prunes the pines to deprive
the trees of a ladder that fl ames
could climb into the combustible
crowns.
He stacks his fi rewood a safe
distance from his home and
makes sure needles and other
tinder don’t accumulate on his
roof.
Yet for all that, Morgan is trou-
bled by the prospect of the state
compelling property owners, pos-
sibly including some of his neigh-
bors, to take similar precautions
under penalty of law.
“There are a lot of people that
need to do something” to protect
their properties, Morgan said.
“But I have mixed feelings.”
His ambivalence stems from
a law the Oregon Legislature
passed in 2021.
Senate Bill 762 requires,
among other things, that the state
create a map that shows a wild-
fi re danger level for every tax
lot. That map, which the Oregon
Department of Forestry recently
released, also shows the bound-
aries for what’s known as the
wildland-urban interface — WUI
— areas with homes that are
within or near forests or range-
lands where wildfi res are more
likely.
Properties that are both within
the WUI, and that have a wild-
fi re risk rating of either high or
extreme (on a fi ve-level scale
that also includes no risk, low
and moderate risks) could be
required, also under Senate Bill
Wes Morgan/Contributed Photo
Wes Morgan has strived to protect his Sumpter Valley home from wildfi re by maintaining an expense of lush green lawn,
pruning limbs from the ponderosa pines and taking other steps.
762, to create the same sort of
defensible space that Morgan has
around his home.
Such property owners might
also have to comply with changes
in building codes.
Morgan isn’t comfortable with
the state mandating the kinds
of work he undertook on his
property.
But he’s even more troubled
by the process the Department of
Forestry has used.
In July the agency mailed let-
ters to 250,000 to 300,000 prop-
erty owners whose land is within
the WUI and has a wildfi re risk
rating of high or extreme.
Morgan is among the recipi-
ents. His letter is dated July 21.
“I think this letter caught a lot
of us off guard, including me,”
Morgan said on Tuesday, Aug.
2. “I think the state got the cart
before the horse.”
He cites the letter itself. It
reads, in part: “You may be
required to take actions to create
defensible space around your
home and adhere to changes to
building code requirements. Both
of these regulatory processes are
still in development.”
The problem, in Morgan’s
view, is that he and tens of thou-
sands of other property owners
are left to wonder what they
might be required to do, and
when.
According to the Forestry
Department, the Oregon State
Fire Marshal is working on the
defensible space requirements.
The agency is slated to adopt
those in December 2022, and take
eff ect in 2023.
The state Building Codes
Division is responsible for the
building code requirements men-
tioned in the letter to property
owners.
The agency is scheduled to
adopt codes Oct. 1, 2022, and
those will take eff ect April 1,
2023.
Sumpter the most heavily
aff ected part of
Baker County
On the Forestry Department’s
new map — www.oregon.gov/odf/
fi re/pages/wildfi re-risk.aspx —
Sumpter stands out among Baker
County communities.
The entire community, which
has about 212 residents and 500
homes, is both within the WUI
and has a wildfi re risk rating of
either high or extreme. Sumpter
is, in eff ect, a town within a sec-
ond-growth ponderosa pine forest.
Kurt Clarke, chief of the vol-
unteer Sumpter Fire Department,
said as far as he can tell, every
Sumpter property owner got a
version of the letter that Morgan
received.
Clarke said he’s talked with
a few residents who wonder
whether, or how, the pending reg-
ulations under Senate 762 will
aff ect them.
Others, he said, worry that
their homeowner insurance pol-
icies could be canceled because,
based on the map, their homes are
in a high or extreme fi re risk area.
(Most of the city’s tax lots are
rated as high risk, with some scat-
tered lots in the extreme category.)
Like Morgan, Clarke promotes
defensible space tactics such as
pruning trees and clearing the
ground of needles and limbs.
He said the fi re department and
city offi cials encourage residents
to take such precautions. Clarke
believes Sumpter has made prog-
ress over the years.
The city allows residents to
bring yard debris to a city prop-
erty where it can be safely burned,
Clarke said.
“My citizens, I’ve got to say,
are very fi re savvy,” he said.
Still and all, Clarke said he
believes it can be hard for some
property owners to truly under-
stood how devastating a wildfi re
can be if they haven’t personally
experienced a catastrophe such as
what befell Paradise, California,
in 2018, or another Northern Cal-
ifornia town, Greenville, just a
year ago.
“Some people don’t think it’s
going to happen,” Clarke said.
Morgan’s concerns about
Senate Bill 762 are far from rare.
The Forestry Department
received about twice as many
public comments opposed to
the wildfi re risk mapping than
in favor, mainly from people
who believe the WUI areas are
too large, said Tim Holschbach,
the agency’s fi re prevention and
policy manager.
Mike Shaw, chief of the For-
estry Department’s fi re protection
division, said the agency will be
in a “fi sh bowl” of scrutiny due to
Senate Bill 762 and its potential
eff ects.
“The agency’s work is not
done. The work will continue
through this year. We know we’re
not going to be perfect,” Shaw
said. “There will be adjustments
in the future. This is a great fi rst
step.”
The Oregon Farm Bureau
has been one of the more vocal
groups concerned about the
eff ects of the wildfi re risk map
and the WUI boundaries.
The Farm Bureau criticized
Senate Bill 762 for its” top-down”
approach to reducing the wildfi re
risk in rural areas.
The number of properties both
within the WUI and with a wild-
fi re risk rating of high or extreme
is smaller than the Farm Bureau
anticipated, however.
According to the Forestry
Department, about 120,276 tax
lots — 8% of the state’s total
— meet both of those criteria,
but about 80,000 of those have
a home or other structure that
might be subject to the defen-
sible space or building code
regulations.
Barns and other outbuild-
ings are exempt from the
requirements.
However, Lauren Smith, the
Farm Bureau’s director of gov-
ernment and national aff airs, said
she’s concerned that the state
might end that exemption in the
future.
“We’re always going to be
uncomfortable because we will
have properties that fall into that
high and extreme risk WUI,”
Smith said.
— Capital Press reporter Mateusz Perkowski
contributed to this story.
Old school in Hermiston serves as police training site
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
HERMISTON — Oregon
State Police led local offi cers on
training that mimicked real-world
situations, including working in
blazing heat.
The training took place
July 29-30, in Hermiston at the
former Rocky Heights Elemen-
tary School. Hermiston Police
Chief Jason Edmiston said the
plan was to allow the OSP SWAT
team to what training it could do,
then state police would oversee
training for local patrol offi cers
that would serve as a reminder to
how to respond to certain situa-
tions, such as a building alarm or
even an active shooter.
State police provided six
instructors, he said, and about 20
offi cers from Hermiston police,
Umatilla police and the Umatilla
County Sheriff ’s Offi ce partici-
pated each day.
The trainings took place in the
mornings to mid afternoons, and
other than the high heat, Edmiston
said, the report he received was
this was a boon.
Putting together this particular
training started about six months
ago, the police chief said, but he
started the wheels rolling in early
2020, after Hermiston School
District voters approved a bond
for new facilities. Edmiston said
that opened up the possibility of
training at a site the district no
longer would need.
Hermiston police did this
before at the former Armand
Larive, and in this case it was the
former Rocky Heights Elementary
School.
The school is getting ready
for demolition, he said, and that
makes it a prime place for police
to use. Offi cers had to enter dark-
ened rooms and navigate around
debris and obstacles on fl oors.
“It just feels a little bit more
real world rather than something
that’s staged,” Edmiston said.
“You never know what kind of sit-
uation you go into.”
Once the plan was set with
OSP sending its staff and local
agencies committing to attend,
not even the sweltering heat was
going to postpone the training.
And other than having to deal
with the heat, Edmiston said the
reports he heard was that the
training was top notch.
In addition to working in a
Boating accident at McKay Reservoir claims a life
into a private vehicle that
met with medics near the
reservoir entrance. The
ambulance rushed Camden
to St. Anthony Hospital,
Pendleton, where he suc-
cumbed to his injuries.
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — A Mil-
ton-Freewater man died
Friday, July 29, from a
boating accident at McKay
Reservoir near Pendleton.
According to the Uma-
tilla County Sheriff ’s
Offi ce, a 911 caller at
6:13 p.m. July 29 reported
the accident, and sher-
iff ’s offi ce marine deputies
responded to the scene.
An investigation
revealed eight occupants
in a boat had been tubing
on the reservoir. One
in the group, Benjamin
Ryan Camden, 41, of Mil-
ton-Freewater, was in the
water. He attempted to get
back into the boat when the
transom ladder broke.
“Camden was unable to
East Oregonian, File
Boaters on June 2, 2021, recreate on McKay Reservoir outside of
Pendleton. A Milton-Freewater man died Friday, July 29, 2022, from a
boating accident at McKay Reservoir near Pendleton.
pull himself into the boat,
and it was decided he would
hold onto the starboard
handrail while the boat
operator headed toward a
boat ramp,” the sheriff ’s
offi ce reported.
While slowing motoring
toward the boat ramp,
Camden lost his grip and
slid under the boat. He suf-
fered serious injuries to his
lower left leg from propeller
cuts.
Nearby boaters assisted
Camden to shore and then
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more real-world environment, this
kind of training with offi cers from
diff erent agencies improves com-
munication in a crisis. putting
faces to names is important, he
said, but when diff erent agencies
respond to the same emergency,
it helps them to be able to talk to
each other.
Case in point, he said, was
the shooting in February at the
Fred Meyer in Richland, Wash-
ington. Police from the Tri-Cities
responded, but so did Hermiston
police and other local law enforce-
ment. That kind of coordination
requires communication, he said.
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