The Josephine County Commissioners hosted a meeting today in the Anne Basker Auditorium to allow county commissioners across Oregon to question representatives from the Oregon State University and Oregon Department of Forestry about the draft Wildfire Hazard Map.
There were 100 local residents in the meeting which heard comments from commissioners from half of Oregon’s 36 counties which are negatively impacted by Oregon Wildfire Hazard Map. Very impressive group of men and women serving the rural counties of Oregon.
The meeting began with a presentation which recapped the Wildfire Hazard Map creation process. In short, fire hazard is a product of burn probability and fire density. SB-762 includes four criteria for wildfire risk: weather, topography, vegetation, and climate.
It was pointed out that no questions would be accepted on insurance-related matters. Just the map.
The Oregon Department of Forestry will be meeting September 4 to vote on irrigation rules. Current rules reduce fire hazard if a property is irrigated at least one year out of five.
When asked when the deadline was for county commissioners to submit comments, it was unclear how or when these questions would be answered outside this meeting. What’s clear is that the Sept. 4 meeting is to discuss irrigation rules.
Many county commissioners came prepared with questions, comments and obvious errors in the wildfire map. (Note that using Zoom it was difficult to get the names of the various county commissioners.)
Here are some highlights:
Baker County got the discussion started with a question about the appeals process. He said, it was “unfair to put the property owner under an appeals process for an anomaly in the fire map.”
The answer was that a “contested law process would require an administrative judge.” The answer also said that a property with a reservoir on a property might get a high hazard if the entire property was mainly high risk.
A county commissioner from Wasco County later gave an example of a tax lot which is 100% lake and is rated “moderate risk.”
A Crook County commissioner spoke of adjoining properties with different hazards. Several commissioners had a similar comment and shared examples on screen. She pointed out much higher actual risk at Sun River and Black Butte than similar properties in Crook County. Lower hazard level at Sun River despite higher difficulty in fighting fires.
Curry County Commissioner Jay Trost made a strong case to correct the map for Curry County residents. “95% of properties are within 3 miles of the coast.” He added that fire fuel reduction on state and federal lands would be a preventable measure to reduce wildfire hazard. He got loud applause when he pointed out that “100% of their wildfires were started on state and federal lands.”
Deschutes County Commissioner Patty Adair pointed out that the Caldera Springs community is rated “high hazard” despite spending $2 million over the past five years to reduce wildfire risk. She said it was very similar to Sun River which is rated “moderate hazard.”
Deschutes County Commissioner Phillip Chang was the only commissioner to get booed by the audience. He claimed that some properties are rated too low and that “if all properties were rated high the arguments would end.” He also pointed out that houses are fuel. OSU answered that houses are considered fuel 900 meters into a community.
John Rowl of Grant County pointed out that 65% of Grant County is managed by state and federal and this land is the driving force for fuel load.
Harney County Commissioner Kristen Shelman said that there is little private land available for development and most is rated high hazard. She commented that it has been a “disappointing effort to make any meaningful change to this mapping effort.” She also said she is very concerned that this map is “going to hurt more than help. Period. This map will do so little to save homes in the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface).” She argued that we need to shift attack to immediate suppression. In conclusion she added, “If this map is not going to move the needle, we need to seriously think about stopping this map.”
Hood River County Commissioner Leticia Moretti showed numerous examples of lone high hazard surrounded by low and moderate hazard properties. She pointed out that her staff had identified 100 properties which have errors. The OSU staff said a meeting is planned for later this week to go over the lots.
Jackson County Commissioner Rick Dyer didn’t mince his words in condemning the wildfire map. “The maps are fundamentally flawed” with 10% of tax lots not counted. “Bad information in means you’re going to get bad information out.” He said, “We don’t know how many problems we have because the notification letters won’t go out until after the comment period ends.” Dotterrer also said, the “map will invite costly litigation, erode public trust, and lower confidence in government.” He pointed out the mismanagement of public lands and said that “100% suppression would save a lot more structure than this map.” He concluded by saying, the “map will impose significant costs on property owners and is not justified by the accuracy of the map.”
The state employee responded by saying that up-to-date tax lots for all 36 counties would be incorporated in the final map.
Next up was Josephine County Commissioner Herman Baertschiger who spoke for the BCC. He began by pointing out to the virtual attendees that we have “100 people in the auditorium who have submitted 50 questions for today’s meeting.” Despite the request to limit questions to “2 or 3 per county” Baertschiger grilled the OSU employee:
“How many years of experience fighting wildfires?” “Zero.”
“What computer program do you use to model wildfires?” “The Large Fire Simulator program”
The law added “climate” to causes of wildfires. He asked how climate affected major fires which happened a hundred years ago.
“When it comes to verifications of computer modeling, you get your tail in the pickup and check what yoru computer says. Have you done this?” A: “I represent staff with hundreds of years of experience.”
He asked the ODF employee, “Will there be any new assessments on high to offset high fire mitigation costs.” A: “A committee is looking at how much landowners are paying now … not based on high, moderate, low hazard … Assessments are made on initial attack response.” This was very unclear.
Baertschiger closed by stating, “I do not support the methodology used for this map.” The audience applauded loudly.
Tillimook County Commissioner Doug Olsen pointed out of 300,000 acres of woodlands, 200,000 are off-limits due to spotted owls. “Trees on that land will rot and burn.”
Wasco County Commissioner Scott Hege said that “People need to look at these maps and have confidence in them. Problem is they cannot do this.” The OSU employee pointed out that Pyrologics, a fire modeling firm out of Misssoula, Montana was used for the wildfire map. He pointed out several examples of map errors included one county-owned lot which is 80% covered with gravel and rated “high hazard.” He was very skeptical of the map and the mapmakers, “You say, ‘Trust us. We have the best data.’”
Yamhill County Commissioner Lindsay Berschauer closed the comments by asking, “Where is the accountability of state and federal governments? You cannot put it entirely on private property owners.
In closing, the commissioners were encouraged to get their comments and questions to OSU.
After the Zoom call ended, Josephine County Chair John West had a few questions for the local attendees.
“How much money was paid to OSU to create this map?” Someone called out “millions.”
“Why this map?” West said it was about control.
“How was the map created?” West said every county commissioner except for Mr. Change thought the map displayed incompetence.
West stated that the counties need to work together to sue the state for loss of insurance, etc. as a result of the map.
He asked, “How is this map going to make us safer or stop wildfires?” He told us to take away wind-driven fires and ask, “When was the last big fire?” With over 30 years of experience fighting wildfires, West listed several major wildfires which stopped when they hit private property.
This is a continuing story which will get hot again when notification letters go to over 100,000 properties in early October. That’s the 10% of properties which are rated high-hazard and are in the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface.)
By state law, the letters were scheduled to arrive six weeks after the closing of the public comment period. That might be a smart way to cut down on the number of public comments received.
Yet the letters will go out a couple weeks before the November ballots get mailed out. I expect those 100,000 property owners to vote “No” on every tax increase and to support politicians who support “more freedom and less government.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said Jackson County Commissioner Dave Dotterrer spoke at this meeting. The article was corrected to show it was County Commissioner Rick Dyer who represented the Jackson County Commission at this meeting.