NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Saturday, July 3, 2021
Small change to wildfi re bill brought bipartisan support
By TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian
SALEM — After some
last-minute jockeying and
wordsmithing, both back-
ers and advocacy groups
who had opposed elements
of Oregon’s omnibus wild-
fi re response bill say they are
satisfi ed with the version that
lawmakers passed last month.
Senate Bill 762, which
comes with a $185 million
price tag, contains myriad
provisions to up the state’s
game when it comes to fi ght-
ing wildfires, preparing
communities for them, and
making forests more resil-
ient to fi re. It comes after the
state’s devastating Labor Day
fi res last year, and as it enters
what many experts believe
will be another challenging
fi re season this year.
The bill garnered biparti-
san support after lawmakers
agreed to sidestep the biggest
sticking point over lands
subject to property restric-
tions intended to slow the
spread of wildfi re. Lawmak-
ers removed a key defi nition
from the bill so that it could
be outlined with more input
later, assuaging some Repub-
licans.
Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ash-
land, the chief sponsor of the
bill, said he was looking to
hold the line on any amend-
ments that would water down
the bill and was fi ne with the
outcome.
“When it became clear
Kari Greer/U.S. Forest Service Photo, File
After some last-minute jockeying and wordsmithing, both backers and advocacy groups
who had opposed elements of Oregon’s omnibus wildfi re response bill say they are satisfi ed
with the version that lawmakers passed last month.
that we needed to have one
more amendment to get a
real bipartisan vote, the only
thing I wanted was to make
sure that no category of
land would be categorically
excluded from regulation,” he
said. “I got that.”
At issue was how the bill
defi ned the so-called wild-
land urban interface, or
WUI — the area where new
building codes and defensi-
ble space provisions would
apply and property owners
would potentially bear
costs and aesthetic impacts.
In common parlance, the
WUI is the transition zone
between undeveloped land
with combustible vegetation
and clustered human devel-
opment.
As such, it can be the fi rst
line of defense against wild-
fires entering larger urban
areas, or simply areas consid-
ered at highest risk for prop-
erty damage or loss of life
because of their location in
Forecast for Pendleton Area
TODAY
SUNDAY
| Go to AccuWeather.com
MONDAY
Very hot with
sizzling sunshine
Sunny and very
warm
98° 64°
95° 62°
TUESDAY
Very hot with
blazing sunshine
WEDNESDAY
Blazing sunshine
and very hot
Sunshine; winds
subsiding, warm
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
97° 64°
98° 69°
the woods or grasslands.
However, some groups
that initially opposed the
bill, including the Oregon
Farm Bureau and the Oregon
Property Owners Associa-
tion, argued that the WUI
defi nition it included was far
too broad, and could subject
virtually the entire state, from
5,000-acre ranches in eastern
Oregon to homes within Port-
land and other urban areas, to
the proposed regulations.
Rural legislators off ered
98° 66°
100° 65°
No structures
damaged in blaze
about 18 miles
from Baker City
92° 62°
103° 71°
OREGON FORECAST
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
95° 62°
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Seattle
Wenatchee
81/58
Olympia
69/57
91/56
99/63
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
99/68
Lewiston
79/55
101/69
Astoria
68/57
Pullman
Yakima 99/65
81/54
102/67
Portland
Hermiston
87/57
The Dalles 101/69
Salem
Corvallis
85/53
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
98/59
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
90/55
98/58
99/60
Ontario
106/72
Caldwell
Burns
93°
65°
85°
56°
107° (2013) 42° (2003)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
Albany
86/55
0.00"
0.00"
0.01"
1.93"
1.65"
5.71"
WINDS (in mph)
103/70
98/56
0.00"
0.00"
0.02"
4.34"
8.57"
7.59"
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 95/54
89/56
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
HERMISTON
Enterprise
98/64
95/65
91°
60°
85°
56°
106° (2013) 42° (1955)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
82/56
Aberdeen
94/65
98/68
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Today
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
101/63
Sun.
WSW 8-16
W 7-14
WSW 8-16
W 8-16
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
97/55
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
5:11 a.m.
8:48 p.m.
1:28 a.m.
3:03 p.m.
New
First
Full
Last
July 9
July 17
July 23
July 31
Nevertheless, with a bill
that many have labeled one
of the most important this
session, legislative leaders
were anxious to attract some
bipartisan support and avoid
having it widely labeled as
yet another cram-down from
urban Democrats that would
harm rural Oregonians. So
they convened a last minute
committee to seek a compro-
mise.
The deal involved a small
tweak to the bill’s language,
pulling the defi nition of the
wildland urban interface
from the legislation and dele-
gating it to the Oregon Board
of Forestry to define after
more public input. The Board
of Forestry was directed to
adopt a new definition not
later than 100 days after the
passage of the bill.
Dave Hunnicutt, presi-
dent of the Oregon Property
Owners Association, said he
still had concerns about the
bill and its implementation,
but the change made it signifi -
cantly better.
“No one in any other
state would refer to a house
on 500 acres in Lake County
as urban, but the way the
bill was drafted, that’s what
forestry would have been
required to do,” he said. “It
was critical for us to not have
a broad defi nition of the WUI
put into statute. We’ll proba-
bly wind up with a defi nition
that is reasonable and makes
sense and that’s all we’ve
ever asked.”
100-acre blaze burns in Keating Valley
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
101° 69°
up nightmare scenarios:
farmers being forced to plow
under crops, homeowners
being required to clear-cut
legacy trees and remove all
ornamental vegetation, and
a broad swath of Oregonians
subject to massive new costs
when building new structures
or renovating existing ones.
It was never clear those
fears were based in reality.
Before anything gets regu-
lated, the bill directs the
Department of Forestry to
produce a map of wildfi re risk
across the state at the prop-
erty level, and the Oregon
State Fire Marshal to estab-
lish requirements for property
owners to manage combusti-
ble vegetation around homes
and other structures.
The Depar t ment of
Consumers and Business
Services, meanwhile, will
adopt wildfire mitigation
building code standards for
new structures and substan-
tial renovations by October
2022.
But those new require-
ments would only apply in
areas of the wildland urban
interface where wildfire
risk was deemed high or
extreme. The bill includes a
process for property owners
to appeal the designation of
their property if it falls in the
high or extreme risk catego-
ries. And some of the cost
estimates thrown around by
lawmakers related to new
building codes appeared to
be wildly infl ated.
BAKER CITY — A fi re
sparked by farm equipment
on the hottest June day on
record in Baker County
raced through dry grass and
sagebrush in Keating Valley,
threatening several homes
before crews from multiple
agencies, with help from a
pair of air tankers, stopped
the blaze Tuesday, June 29.
“It really took off in
110 - deg ree heat wit h
20-mile-an-hour winds
behind it,” said Buzz Harper,
chief of the Keating Rural
Fire Protection District. “In
that heat and wind it could
have been real bad.”
The fi re burned about 100
acres, Harper said. No homes
were damaged.
Baker County Sheriff
Travis Ash said the sher-
iff ’s offi ce gave evacuation
notices to about 10 residents
as a precaution.
Flames came within about
50 yards of one home, Harper
said.
Harper said the blaze
started in a field where a
swather was operating. He
said he suspects a disc on the
swather hit a rock, causing a
spark.
When he was notified
about the fi re, Harper said he
took one engine, with a water
capacity of 250 gallons, while
his son, Steven, and another
Keating volunteer, Brad
Bottoms, headed out with a
1,000-gallon engine.
Buzz Harper said the trio,
with the two engines, arrived
within a few minutes and had
nearly stopped the fire, at
about 10 acres, when both ran
out of water almost simulta-
neously.
“When you’re in the
middle of it all (the water)
goes pretty fast,” he said.
The fire, still propelled
by the hot, dry wind, contin-
ued to move to the north and
northwest, with fl ame lengths
around 20 feet when the blaze
hit patches of drought-des-
iccated sagebrush. Embers
were starting spot fi res 200 to
300 yards ahead of the main
blaze, Harper said.
Harper said multiple fi re
agencies, responding through
the mutual aid system,
arrived soon after with a
variety of equipment includ-
ing engines and bulldozers.
Overhead, a pair of
single-engine air tankers
dropped fi re retardant on the
fringes of the blaze to block
its spread.
“They did a great job of
setting up lines,” Harper said
of the aircraft.
He was he was glad to
have two tankers available
so quickly, considering that
fi res are burning elsewhere
in the region, and the fire
danger is high due to the
record-setting heat wave, so
there’s no surplus of fi refi ght-
ing resources.
“We were lucky to get
what we got,” Harper said.
The Pine Valley and
Eagle Valley departments,
Baker Rural, the Look-
out-Glasgow Rangeland
Fire Protection Association,
U.S. Forest Service, BLM
and Oregon Department of
Forestry each responded to
assist, Harper said.
NATIONAL EXTREMES
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 111° in Needles, Calif. Low 35° in Wolcott, Colo.
IN BRIEF
Walla Walla County in
Washington has fi rst case
West Nile in 2021
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
WALLA WALLA — The fi rst detection of
West Nile virus in 2021 has been in mosqui-
toes in the Burbank area, according to Wash-
ington state health offi cials.
The Washington State Department of
Health said in a news release Thursday, July
1, that mosquitoes infected with West Nile
virus are able to spread infection to humans.
Last year two people were reported to have
become infected with the virus in Washing-
ton.
The majority of people infected with the
virus do not get sick. About 1 in 5 will develop
a fever or other symptoms that go away with-
out medical treatment.
For a small number of people, infection
with West Nile virus can lead to permanent
neurological eff ects or death. People over age
60 and those with certain medical conditions
are most at risk of severe disease.
— Walla Walla Union-Bulletin
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
-10s
-0s
0s
showers t-storms
10s
rain
20s
flurries
30s
snow
40s
ice
50s
60s
cold front
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