The BulleTin • Thursday, June 24, 2021 A13
Burns
Continued from A1
In New Mexico, Gov.
Michelle Lujan Grisham
signed legislation on March 18
that will clear the way for more
prescribed fires by establishing
liability standards for landown-
ers who conduct them and cre-
ating a certification program.
In Oregon, a bill from state
Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland,
would enact rules for pre-
scribed fires and a certified
burn manager program. He
envisions Oregon having as
many as hundreds of trained
managers to supervise pre-
scribed fires.
“I don’t see that we have any
option other than to increase
the prescribed burns,” said
Golden, who is from the Rogue
Valley, where wildfires tore
into two towns last year. “We’ve
got, across the Western U.S.,
a buildup of decades of fuels,
and it’s going to burn.
“So do you want to burn in
a planned, strategic way that
has an element of control to
it, or do you want it to burn in
megafires, with all the costs —
human, animal, environmental
costs — that that entails?”
It took years for forest man-
agers to come around to ac-
cept and then finally embrace
prescribed burning. In the first
half of the 20th century, fire
was seen as the enemy, with
Camp
Continued from A1
One protester was perched
on top of a ladder, while oth-
ers stood behind the barri-
cade. Some shook the barri-
cade and taunted officers, who
announced that anyone who
crossed the barricade would be
arrested.
The only incident during
the sweep came when a shirt-
less man with long black hair
told an officer he needed to use
one of the portable toilets in
the camp. After officers denied
entry, the man, later identified
as 32-year-old Darren Hiatt,
jumped over the barricade. He
ran into the camp toward the
federal and state forest manag-
ers believing prescribed burn-
ing damaged the environment,
particularly timber, a commer-
cial resource. But in the late
1960s and 1970s, federal forest
managers began employing
prescribed burns.
Yet scaling up the practice
has been slow. From 1995
through 2000, an average of
1.4 million federal acres were
treated with prescribed fire
each year, far short of the 70
million acres that in 2001 were
in critical need of fuel reduc-
tion to avoid high-severity
wildfires, biologist David Carle
said in his 2002 book “Burn-
ing Questions: America’s Fight
with Nature’s Fire.” Another
141 million acres also needed
treatment.
Several cold realities are
stacked against the latest plans:
The periods between wild-
fire seasons when prescribed
burning can happen safely are
shrinking; some forests are too
overgrown to ignite without
thinning; and prescribed fires
can shroud nearby towns.
“We have to be mindful of
not pouring smoke into com-
munities because that’s a viola-
tion of the Clean Air Act,” said
Tim Holschbach, deputy chief
of policy and planning with Or-
egon’s Department of Forestry.
Furthermore, many land-
owners are reluctant to use pre-
scribed fire because of fears of
getting hit with steep costs.
Some states can hold burn-
ers liable for any property
damage caused by an escaped
prescribed fire. Others use
so-called simple negligence
standards, which require the
burner to practice reasonable
care. A plaintiff would need to
prove negligence for the burner
to be responsible for damages
and firefighting suppression
costs. Gross negligence stan-
dards make it harder to hold
people accountable, requir-
ing plaintiffs to show burners
acted with reckless disregard if
fires get out of control.
To encourage prescribed
burning on private lands, Ore-
gon will explore shifting from
simple to gross negligence.
Gov. Kate Brown signed legis-
lation on June 11 that directs
a state agency, in consultation
with stakeholders, to study
whether states with such stan-
dards experience more pre-
scribed fires and more out-of-
control fires. The review must
also examine the accessibility
of insurance coverage for pre-
scribed fires.
Prescribed burning has
prevented disasters, and high
rebuilding costs. In 2017, a
wildfire threatened Sisters, but
firefighters were able to con-
trol it because months earlier,
crews removed trees and brush
with machines, then ignited
prescribed burns.
“The fire came to a halt,
both because it had less fu-
els and also because in the
toilets, and was quickly tackled
and arrested by five officers.
“This is what happens when
you try to go to the bathroom
in Bend, Oregon!” yelled one
protester who declined to pro-
vide his name.
“He’s unarmed. Why are
there so many of you?” yelled
another protester who declined
to provide her name.
Protesters, including Rich-
ter, crossed the barricade and
yelled at officers to release the
man. Protesters who crossed
the barricade were led by of-
ficers back to the other side,
and Hiatt was escorted, hand-
cuffed, through the camp to a
police cruiser.
Hiatt was booked in De-
schutes County jail on charges
of second degree criminal tres-
pass, interfering with a peace
officer and resisting arrest.
According to Richter, Hiatt
is a resident of the camp. The
bathrooms Hiatt wanted to use
were set up by volunteers in an
effort to keep the camp clean
and to quell sanitation con-
cerns from neighbors.
During the cleanup, several
homeless advocates gathered
outside Bend’s first long-term
shelter run by Shepherd’s
House Ministries, about two
blocks south of Emerson Av-
enue.
The advocates represented
Shepherd’s House, Homeless
Leadership Coalition, De-
schutes County, The Family
Kitchen and REACH, a home-
less service organization. They
showed up to offer support to
any homeless person who was
displaced by the cleanup. The
shelter is closed during the day,
but Shepherd’s House brought a
van full of snacks and toiletries.
“We are here in case any-
body does need extra support,”
said Colleen Thomas, home-
less outreach coordinator for
Deschutes County and chair of
the Homeless Leadership Co-
alition.
A few homeless people from
Emerson Avenue showed up,
but many had already left the
area.
Thomas and the other advo-
cates spent the past few weeks
helping the homeless people
collect their belongings and
find other places to stay. Most
had nowhere to go.
“Our hope is to continue to
know where folks ended up
so we can stay in touch with
them,” Thomas said, “and make
sure they have extra tents and
sleeping bags if they need it.”
The city has long-term plans
to purchase the Bend Value
Inn and transform it into a
shelter and find a location for
a navigation center, where
homeless people can go to re-
ceive services. Another plan in-
cludes finding publicly owned
land around the county to cre-
ate a managed camp.
A Forest
Service em-
ployee ig-
nites a line
of fire during
a prescribed
burn in
the moun-
tains above
Sumpter in
2005.
S. John Collins/
Baker City Herald
thinned, more natural forest,
there was a lot more space for
the firefighters,” noted Demo-
cratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Or-
egon, who is pushing for more
funding for forest treatment.
Scott Stephens, a profes-
sor of wildland fire science at
the University of California,
Berkeley, wants a big increase
in prescribed burns, along with
mechanical forest thinning, but
predicts it will be gradual due
to both a lack of people trained
in it and of political and socie-
tal support.
The West, which is more
susceptible to wildfires because
of its vast wildlands and dry
climate, has been stepping up
prescribed burns.
In 2019, 3.7 million acres
were treated by prescribed fire
in the West, a 268% increase
from 2011, the National Asso-
ciation of State Foresters and
the Coalition of Prescribed
Fire Councils said in a report.
Stephens said prescribed
fire and restoration thinning
should increase at least five-
fold to turn things around
and create healthy forests as
Biswell, his predecessor at
Berkeley, envisioned.
“Once you get areas treated,
you have to come back in
around 15 years for mainte-
nance treatments. And this
never ends,” Stephens said.
“This is a key point: The pro-
gram has to last forever.”
None of those plans can help
the homeless people evicted
from Emerson Avenue, the ad-
vocates said.
Stacey Witte, the executive
director of the homeless non-
profit REACH, said the situa-
tion shines a light on the gaps
in options currently available
to homeless people. They can
legally camp in the Deschutes
National Forest for two weeks
or find spaces in the local shel-
ters, but otherwise they have to
find other places like Emerson
Avenue.
“We keep moving this prob-
lem,” Witte said, “and it’s cost-
ing so much more money.”
e
Reporter: 541-617-7820,
kspurr@bendbulletin.com
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