Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett talks about work on state fire advisory council

Aug. 10—Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett fears that Oregon's effort to protect rural homes from wildfires has been derailed, at least temporarily, by the controversy over a fire risk map that state officials unveiled June 30 and canceled last week.

Bennett is directly involved in the campaign to avoid wildfire catastrophes as chairman of a state advisory council, although he didn't contribute to the map that has prompted complaints statewide over the past week or so.

Property owners and state legislators, including Baker County's representatives, Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, have criticized the state for releasing a map that wasn't based on actual ground surveys of properties and that could affect residents' homeowner's insurance coverage and cost.

"Without doing the ground-truthing we're left with a document (the fire risk map) that is full of challenges," Bennett said on Tuesday, Aug. 9.

He said it's not clear to him whether insurance companies are actually using the withdrawn fire risk map to make decisions about whether they'll insure a property, and how much they'll charge for premiums.

"We're trying to sort that out," Bennett said.

Mark Peterson, public information and communications director for the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, wrote in an email to the Herald on Wednesday, Aug. 10, that there is "a misunderstanding out there that the state wildfire map is causing insurance rates to increase."

"The fact that the map was not finalized and is still subject to change makes it extremely unlikely that insurers could analyze the map, let alone implement changes based on the map," Peterson wrote. "The Division of Financial Regulation, which regulates insurance, has informally surveyed insurance companies and all of them indicated to date that they do not use the state wildfire map. Also, we don't have any filings to date that insurers are using the map as a rate factor."

Peterson recommended that residents who have concerns about their insurance call the Division of Financial Regulation's toll-free consumer advocacy hotline, 888-877-4894. Consumers call also file a complaint online at dfr.oregon.gov.

The goal of the 2021 legislation that required the risk map, among other things, is to encourage rural residents to clean up their properties and reduce the wildfire threat, he said — actions that in theory should reduce, not increase, insurance costs.

Bennett said he fears that the outcry over the risk map, even though state officials have decided to revise it, could deflect attention from the chief objective of encouraging rural residents to help protect their homes from fire. Under the legislation that requires the state to draw the fire risk map — Senate Bill 762 — owners of some properties deemed to be at high or extreme risk for wildfire could be required to clean up their land and also be subject to more strict zoning rules.

State agencies are still working on the regulations for both of those issues.

Bennett's involvementBennett has for years been a leader in state discussions about wildfires.

In early 2019 he was appointed to the Governor's Council on Wildfire Response. That group, created by Gov. Kate Brown's executive order of Jan. 30, 2019, was tasked with reviewing the state's overall wildfire strategy, including fire prevention and firefighting, protecting homes and communities that are at a higher risk from wildfires, and the health effects of wildfire smoke.

Brown created the council in part as a reaction to the fire that destroyed much of Paradise, California, in November 2018.

In 2021, after fires severely damaged several Oregon towns over Labor Day 2020, and after the Oregon Legislature approved Senate Bill 762, Bennett was appointed to another state advisory group, the Wildfire Programs Advisory Council. He was elected as chair of that council during its first meeting on Nov. 5, 2021.

A 'far-reaching' lawSenate Bill 762, which Bennett described as "far-reaching" and which he and other members of the Governor's Council on Wildfire Response helped to create, has several parts. The legislation includes more than $195 million to help bolster Oregon's ability to deal with wildfires, including reducing the risk of blazes.

A key part of that strategy is promoting what's known as "defensible spaces."

The basic idea is to encourage people who live in areas prone to wildfires to protect their homes by, for instance, pruning trees and maintaining a zone devoid of easily combustible material within 50 to 100 feet of homes.

The state is focusing on properties that are deemed to be at high or extreme fire risk and that are also within what's known as the wildland-urban interface — WUI, where homes are built in or near forests or rangelands where wildfires are more likely to start. The legislation includes money for a grant program to help people who own property that's within the WUI, and at high or extreme risk, to create defensible spaces.

The concept behind the since-withdrawn fire risk map, Bennett said, was to help the state prioritize projects for places most vulnerable to wildfires.

Concerns about reaction to fire risk mapBennett said that although as a member of the Wildfire Programs Advisory Council he didn't contribute to drawing the map — that was a task assigned to the Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State University — he and other council members expressed concern about how landowners and the public in general might react to the release of the map.

Bennett said he was especially worried about cases in which landowners might dispute their fire risk designation.

During the council's second meeting, on Jan. 14, 2022, Bennett addressed that issue. He said the release of the fire risk map could result in a "tremendous backlash" and that it "is not going to be a pretty sight" if the map and its designations came as a surprise to property owners and to local elected officials. Bennett also commented during that meeting that the fire risk map was one of the more "critical and controversial topics" related to Senate Bill 762.

Also during the Jan. 14 meeting, Mike Shaw, fire chief for the Forestry Department, said the risk map, and the designation of properties as being within the WUI, "is going to be an extremely contentious topic."

"At the end of the day there's going to be folks that are frustrated with the outcome, regardless of what the outcome is," Shaw said.

State solicited public commentsThe Forestry Department had three public hearings from April 19-21 to collect comments about the fire risk map and criteria for whether a property is within the WUI. Based on requests from people attending those hearings, the agency extended the public comment period and scheduled an "information session" on April 29.

Although the state conducted the hearings, the map itself wasn't available until about two months later.

During an interview on Tuesday, Aug. 9, Bennett said he saw the map just two days before it was released to the public on June 30 through the Forestry Department's website.

He said that to some extent the map illustrated the concerns he had expressed during the Jan. 14 meeting.

For instance, Bennett said the map deemed at high risk an irrigated property along Highway 26 near Prineville, while unirrigated land on the opposite side of the highway, which included a residential subdivision in a juniper forest, was at moderate risk. He said those designations seemed backward to him, since juniper trees are especially vulnerable to wildfire, while irrigated fields are not.Bennett also noted that some rural fire stations were deemed at high or extreme risk.

He said he was concerned that the risk map, which designated properties based on local weather, climate, topography and vegetation and used satellite images rather than on-the-ground surveys, didn't consider whether an individual property owner had already created a defensible space, or whether the parcel was within a fire protection district. Either factor, Bennett said, could make a property less vulnerable to wildfire, even if it's within the WUI.

Bennett said he was also troubled by the timeline. Senate Bill 762 required the Forestry Department to release the fire risk map by June 30.

Bennett and other members of the advisory council said during the Jan. 14 meeting that letting the public, and affected property owners, know about the fire risk map in advance was vital.

State Forester Cal Mukumoto, in an Aug. 3 statement announcing the map had been withdrawn, conceded that the state had not been aggressive enough in notifying the public about the map and soliciting public comment about the map's creation.

"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," Mukumoto said.