GOVERNMENT
A14 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2022
Local officials support Oregon’s fire risk map reversal
BY PHIL WRIGHT
Hermiston Herald
PENDLETON — The Oregon De-
partment of Forestry’s decision to pull
back and revise its wildfire risk map
was a wise move, according to local
elected officials.
Sen. Bill Hansell,
R-Athena, said the
rollout of the map
and ensuing letters
to property owners
about fire risk was
not handled well.
Hansell
This not only put the
cart before the horse,
he said, it raised the
worries of lots of
people.
The state forestry
department yanked
the wildfire risk map
Shafer
Thursday, Aug. 4, five
weeks after publish-
ing it. According to the Oregon Capital
Chronicle, the move came after out-
cry from Republican state lawmakers
and residents in southern and Eastern
Oregon who said the roll out of the
map was clumsy and led to people los-
ing their property insurance or having
premiums doubled. They said the Or-
egon Department of Forestry was ill-
equipped to handle the impacts of the
map in the middle of fire season.
“My phone was ringing off the hook,
and the emails,” Hansell said, after the
state put the map online. Lawmakers
were aware the state was working on the
map, he said, but the process did not in-
clude public input that he was aware of.
The map was part of a $220 million
bill — Senate Bill 762 — that came from
the 2021 legislative session as part of a
state push to protect Oregonians against
worsening, climate change-fueled wild-
fires.
The Oregon Department of Forestry
and Oregon State University created the
Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer map. The
searchable map showed the wildfire risk
of 2 million tax lots across the state, cate-
gorizing them in five categories: no, low,
moderate, high or extreme risk. About
80,000 property owners were found to
Mike McMillan/U. S. Forest Service, File
The sun sets in the summer of 2021 over a stand of burned trees from the Bootleg Fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest. The Oregon Department of Forestry on Thurs-
day, Aug. 4, 2022, withdrew its fire risk map after publishing it five weeks earlier in the wake of backlash from the public and politicians.
be in high or extreme risk areas, and re-
ceived letters from the Department of
Forestry telling them that they could be
subject to fire-resistant building codes
currently under development.
Imagine living on Weston Mountain,
Hansell said, and you have never heard
of Senate Bill 762 but you then get a let-
ter from the Oregon Forestry Depart-
ment saying your land is in a high-risk
fire zone and you could be subject to
fire-resistant building codes that are in
development. And if you disagree with
that, you can appeal.
But appeal what? Hansell said. The
farmer in this case does not even get to
know what regulations to appeal.
Umatilla County Commissioner
John Shafer of Pendleton said that is a
scenario he can relate to because he re-
ceived the letter about a week ago.
“I was trying to figure it out,” he said.
“I was as much in the dark as anybody
else who received it.”
Shafer said his property is under the
protection of a city fire department with
a Level 3 Insurance Service Organiza-
tion rating and the letter states he was in
a high-risk area of wildfire.
“That didn’t make sense to me,” he
said.
The map created backlash during
its brief existence. Many people argued
that it incorrectly listed homeowners
in high risk areas when they may not
have been in part because they were not
given credit for taking steps to make
their homes fire resistant. Others com-
plained that the map resulted in insur-
ance companies raising premiums sig-
nificantly and lowering property value.
Shafer said right off he wanted to
know who in Salem from Eastern Or-
egon was working on addressing this,
and found Hansell was on it as well as
Rep. Mark Owens of Crane and Sen.
Lynn Findley of Vale, all Republicans.
The refinements that will be made to
the new fire risk map will incorporate
feedback from more than 2,000 Orego-
nians received during the recent in-per-
son and online meetings with people
around the state, according to the Ore-
gon Department of Forestry’s website.
The department has not set a time-
table for the revisions, according to the
website, because it wants to allow for
plenty of time to get input from the
public.
Oregon State Forester Cal Muku-
moto said in a statement his agency got
specific feedback from 2,000 residents
about problems with the risk designa-
tions that were assigned by the Oregon
Explorer project and said climate scien-
tists would refine the map and reissue a
new version at a later date.
“While we met the bill’s initial dead-
line for delivering on the map, there
wasn’t enough time to allow for the type
of local outreach and engagement that
people wanted, needed and deserved,”
Oregon State Forester Cal Mukumoto
said in a statement. “We know how im-
portant it is to get this right.”
“I actually applauded the efforts of
the Oregon Department of Forestry to
roll it back,” Hansell said.
█
The Observer reporter Dick Mason
contributed to this article.