 * “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
—Helen Keller
As I write this in the middle part of August, we’ve been unscathed (fingers crossed) by major wildfire this summer with the exception of the McKinney Fire just south of the state line. The reasons for that are well described here. I appreciate the recognition of SB 762’s contribution here, but the credit goes mostly to ODF’s firefighting skill and strategy.
Think about it. On a single stormy summer evening in the State of Jefferson, hundreds of dry-lightning strikes can touch ground on parched woodlands and brush fields, often with fierce winds swirling across them. Add to that an abundance of terrain across the Cascade and Siskiyou Mountains that’s too rugged for firefighters to access on the ground. All in all it’s close to a miracle that in the last couple of years you can count the number of Oregon’s massive wildfires on the fingers of both hands.
That’s easy to overlook because it’s about what doesn’t happen. What we notice are the fires that consume hundreds to hundreds of thousands of acres and inflict massive damage and suffering. These would be more common without tools that SB 762 has brought to the table: a vast network of state-of-the-art smoke detection cameras, a detailed strategy of “pre-positioning” ground and air resources at critical sites, and the resulting ability to extinguish nearly all of these ignitions before they reach an acre in size. ODF is serving us exceptionally well here and I’m grateful.
I wanted that on the record at the outset in light of recent criticism leveled at ODF and those of us responsible for passing SB 762. True, the rapid reaction to tiny fires, part of the bill’s “Safe and Effective Wildfire Response” section, is not what’s bothering people. Neither is the third of the bill focused on “Resilient Landscapes,” which involves making forests healthier and less likely to fuel the ferocious megafires that have been exploding across the west—though within that section are controversial forest management issues I’ll write about another day. This edition is about the third of the program, working in coordination with the other two, that IS at the center of the concern and anger you may have heard about. That’s the portion called
The devastation experienced by towns like Santa Rosa, Redding, Weed, Paradise and our own Talent and Phoenix put front and center one question: what can we do to prevent this kind of destruction in the future? It turns out we have little or no control, at least in the short run, of most of the key factors—terrain, the evolving climate, increasing heat, dryness, wind and lightning. The one element where we can make a major difference is the composition, configuration and surroundings of our home and business buildings.
That’s what makes “fire adapted communities” so important. Awareness grew after the Almeda fire, which showed exactly how landscape and outdoor features—vines, bushes, thick weeds, wooden fences and sheds—can become a wick that carries fire from one structure to the next, turning small fires into community infernos. That happens whether forest or rangeland fires enter communities or, more frequently, when fires start from human activity in the “home ignition zone.”
 We had the responsibility of taking this challenge head-on in SB 762. The bill told state agencies to adopt the International Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) code, already in place in most fire-prone jurisdictions, and customize it to meet Oregon’s circumstances. That work’s been going on for more than a year, mostly to craft rules for “defensible space”—fire-wise vegetation zones around buildings—and for building code revisions to harden new homes, or remodels of existing homes, where wildfire threat is severe. That rule-making work has been guided by citizen committees all along the way. Still ahead is announcement of the draft rules and, before they’re finalized, public meetings around the state, including Jackson County, to gather citizen questions, concerns and opinions.
Where will these new rules be applied? To answer that systematically we asked a team of mapping, natural lands, geography and fire experts from ODF and Oregon State University to bring together years of on-the-ground data in order to produce a statewide
 If you’ve heard about any one piece of the whole 762 program, it’s probably this map. It categorizes all Oregon lands into one of five categories, from no-risk to extreme-risk for wildfire. The top two categories, high and extreme risk, are where the defensible space and building code rules, still under development, would be applied.
After more than a year of intensive work, the map was released on June 30. Two weeks later, owners of some 80,000 parcels statewide received letters that their property had been classified either high or extreme risk, that they would be subject to the rules being developed, and how they could appeal the classification if they chose.
We soon found out how much the letters upset some who received them. ODF and OSU scheduled public hearings in late to July to hear from affected citizens. The in-person meetings scheduled for Grants Pass and Medford were cancelled in part because of worrisome threats to state officials, and replaced with a Zoom call on July 27 that drew over 1200 participants.
Here’s coverage of that meeting (if you’d like a link to a video recording of the entire two and a half hours Zoom, let me know at sen.jeffgolden@oregonlegislature.gov).
It wasn’t a relaxed evening. The information was too extensive and detailed to explain well in that format, and most of the dozens of people who spoke were understandably confused, angry or both. One comment from several speakers really hit hard: the very first they’d ever heard a single word that a new wildfire program was underway was when they opened an envelope to read that their property was at high or extreme risk, and that some kind of regulation would follow.
That would probably shock me, too. Here’s a place where our wildfire work over past years clearly fell short. Those of us deeply involved tried to keep our constituents in the loop as we went. I regularly use this newsletter, social media, and my Town Hall meetings for updates, and as SB 762 took shape, radio, television and newspapers ran more than a few stories. In addition, because we knew imposing new requirements on private property is something you don’t do lightly, we made sure that the important parts of the bill’s development included citizen testimony and ongoing advisory committees that specifically included property rights champions.
So as someone who’s had wildfire policy working in at least part of my brain almost daily through my whole Senate term, I was at first baffled that all of this was a complete surprise to some of the people who spoke. It briefly stung to hear the accusation that we’d cooked up this whole thing in secret and thrust it on landowners with no input at all, nothing but an option to appeal their designation after the fact. To be honest, I momentarily forgot something elected representatives should always remember: the demands of earning a living, caring for a family and meeting all kinds of obligations fill most citizens’ lives to the brim (a major reason we have representative rather than direct democracy in the first place). The fact that opportunities to have input were advertised along the way doesn’t change that.
The takeaway is that a program that might increase citizen costs or responsibilities needs an extra layer of early outreach to make contact with as many people who might be affected as possible. That will be expensive, but odds of succeeding without it are slim.
More serious than the communications shortfall is the credibility of the risk map that came out. I imagine some high-level debate is underway right now about how scientifically accurate it is. I have no way to answer that. What I know, after seeing the particulars on a lot of properties, is that in too many instances there’s a troubling gap between what your eyes and common sense tell you on the ground and what the map says.
There’s a lot of scrambling right now to understand the reason; I’ll share what’s uncovered about that in coming weeks. I’m sure that a lay person’s common sense isn’t a fully accurate way to measure wildfire risk. But what’s clear to me is that we can’t move forward with a new regulatory program based on a map that’s hard to believe. That’s the recipe for a train wreck Oregon can’t afford.
After the turbulent Zoom meeting, I was one of a few legislators asking ODF to withdraw the map. The State Forester did that, here, and this part of the SB 762 program is now on hold.
The process going forward isn’t yet clear. My top priority over the next month is to understand and follow it, and to visit more high and extreme risk properties in our district at their owners’ invitation. What’s certain is that we need either a map that better matches on-the-ground circumstances, or a different tool to determine where to focus our resources to reduce the home ignition zone hazard. More on this in coming weeks.
The other big concern is the possibility that homeowners insurance will become more expensive, or hard to get at all, as we continue this work. Two things to say about that, one more reassuring than the other.
First is the abundance of evidence that the SB 762 risk map has had nothing to do with increasing insurance premiums and policy cancellations. The last decade of catastrophic fires, and the billions of dollars in claims they’ve cost insurers, drove them long ago to begin their own mapping and actuarial analysis. The Oregonian laid the details out here.
Uncertainty around this issue is likely to last a while. If you have solid reason to think that your insurer is increasing premiums or cancelling a policy specifically because of SB 762, please let me know at sen.jeffgolden@oregonlegislature.gov, because there are remedies. We’re also looking into possible legislation that would prevent any increases based on 762 maps.
But there’s a broader fact we have to recognize: homeowner insurance premiums are going up, possibly steeply and possibly no matter where you live. To pretend that we can prevent that is to treat citizens like children instead of grownups. Other parts of the country subject to catastrophic flooding and violent weather events are ahead of us in this trend, lifting insurance availability into the ranks of major national problems. It’s one of the costs that climate activists predicted years ago, one of the reasons they said we can’t afford NOT to move away from fossil fuel energy. It still is.
Let me move from details to the core question. Why are we taking on this big, difficult project in the first place? Why are we investing so much money and effort, and imposing new requirements on how some people maintain their own property?
The steady northward march of community-destroying fire, from southern California through the Bay Area and northern California towns like Santa Rosa, Redding, Weed, and Paradise and then on to our own Southern Oregon towns, answers those questions better than anything I can say. We don’t have to imagine the danger straight ahead of us. We’ve seen it. We’ve lost thousands of homes, seen or experienced the suffering that’s caused, and watched hundreds of valued families leave our valley forever, with many others struggling mightily to regain their footing. For a powerful minute with a local couple that deeply understands what’s at stake, click here.
 The steady climate trend towards hotter summers, drier woodlands, and more intense winds almost guarantees very rough fire seasons ahead. When I think of what that calls on us to do, I try to imagine our frame of mind three or five or ten years from now, after more Oregon towns burn to the ground, if we DON’T aggressively prepare along the lines of SB 762. I doubt that we’ll be congratulating ourselves over how we managed to steer clear of any measure that might impose any cost or additional responsibilities on Oregonians.
We can’t back down. I will do whatever I can do to make SB 762 work better—which, we’ve known from the start, would be a course-correcting process over the years, because the urgency of wildfires called for the earliest possible launch. One part of that will be to provide as much state aid as possible to shield citizens from unbearable costs.
There’s no sugar-coating the challenge of the next few years for Southern Oregon and the northwest generally. State government has tools to meet it, but they won’t work well unless communities like ours come together with more awareness and willingness to prepare cooperatively than ever before. I’m glad to live in the Rogue Valley right now, because we’re a community that can do this.
Are you someone who thinks that, even factoring the overwhelming demand for services stemming from the pandemic and wildfires, state agencies could and should operate more effectively? I’m one of many who agree with you. And I’m interested in finding out what citizens, as well as members of Oregon’s Legislative branch like me, can do to improve performance of Executive branch agencies.
That’s why I’d like you to join Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan and me for a special Town Hall at the Medford Public Library, on September 14th, at 6 pm. Secretary Fagan is in charge of Oregon’s performance audit system, which how measures how well agencies are doing their jobs and what they need to improve. She and I both have ideas for more effective state services, and we want to hear yours. Come join us if you can.
Stay safe and cool for now—
 Senator Jeff Golden, Oregon Senate District 3
Here’s a summary of the grants the State Fire Marshall’s Office will be awarding to help property owners and local governments meet their responsibilities under SB 762. Because they’re targeted for work on high and extreme risk properties, they can’t be distributed until those properties are identified by a final risk map. We hope to know the timeline for that soon.
 -Information on cooling centers can be found here and here.
-Oregon State Fire Marshall Fire Safety Resources available here.
| 
