![]() "For many property owners, the notices were the first time that they've even heard that there was such a thing. "There wasn't a broader context of, 'here's what the state is trying to accomplish, and here's how the map helps do that,'" said Derek Gasperini, public affairs officer at ODF. Once this round of refinements is complete, we are planning to bring a draft of the updated map to communities for discussion and input," Makumoto said in a statement when he nixed the map. "While we met the bill's initial deadline 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. About 80,000 of those lots are in a WUI, meaning they'd be subject to SB 762's new defensible space regulations and building codes that protect against fire, though specific code amendments hadn't yet been drafted by the Department of Consumer and Business Services. That initial map identified that 120,267 tax lots in Oregon at high or extreme risk of wildfire. The short timeframe meant there wasn't a map to shop around for public feedback until it'd been actually produced. Brown signed the bill into law in July 2021, giving state agencies a year to draft the map. ![]() That group had less than a year to create the map, based on the required deadlines in SB762. Its rules were developed by a 27-member advisory committee made up of firefighting agencies, industry lobbyists, nonprofits and intergovernmental organizations. It assigned properties to low, moderate, high or extreme wildfire risk after assessing an area's climate variability, weather conditions, topography and vegetation. The wildfire risk map is the product of Senate Bill 762 from the 2021 legislative session, developed at the request of then-governor Kate Brown and the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, in the wake of the massive fires of 2020 that killed at least 11 people in Oregon.Īmong the bill's goals: improving wildfire preparedness by developing fire-safe building standards, developing responses to wildfires and increasing the resiliency of landscapes. 4, 2022, Oregon State Forester Cal Mukumoto announced ODF would remove the current iteration of the map and withdraw notices sent to property owners. The department then changed its remaining listening sessions to digital-only. The ODF scheduled to have community meetings around the state to explain the map's purpose and function, but canceled the first planned session in Grants Pass after ODF received a voicemail threatening presenters. The public's complaints largely involved potential impacts to property value, insurance increases and disputing the level of risk assigned to them. The risk map received sudden and intense backlash, including thousands of messages to the Oregon Department of Forestry and at least 750 appeals. Along with it came a notice to property owners in the wildland-urban interface, a zone of transition between wilderness and developed land, informing them that their property had been identified as at high or extreme risk for wildfires and that they may be subject to defensible space or building code requirements in the future. In June 2022, the State of Oregon released a wildfire risk map that charted the levels of wildfire risk for every property in Oregon.
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