Former county commissioner Mark Bennett hopes controversial fire risk map doesn't detract from goal of protecting homes

Jan. 27—A revised version of a controversial map estimating the wildfire risk for properties across Oregon has been delayed.

Mark Bennett, who recently retired as a Baker County commissioner, is directly involved in the situation, as chairman of a 19-member wildfire advisory council that was created by the same legislation that also called for the state to draw the risk map.

That was Senate Bill 762, which the Oregon Legislature approved in 2021.

The legislation, prompted in part by the catastrophic fires in Oregon over Labor Day weekend 2020, has multiple components, with an overall goal of reducing the wildfire risk, particularly in rural areas. A key part of the bill is the wildfire risk map. The Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State University, with help from consultants, drafted the map.

The state released it on June 30, 2022.

The map prompted rapid and widespread criticism. Many critics said the map didn't accurately portray the relative risk of wildfire.

Bennett, whose committee didn't work on the map, said in August 2022 that the map was "full of challenges" in part because it wasn't based on actual surveys of individual properties.

The map's risk ratings were based on local weather, climate, topography and vegetation, as well as satellite images of properties.

In addition to complaints about the map itself, many property owners said their homeowner's insurance policy had either been canceled, or not renewed, around the time the state unveiled the map. They blamed the loss of insurance on the state's new map.

Bennett said on Thursday, Jan. 26 that the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services investigated each claim that the state map had influenced insurance companies' decisions.

Bennett said state officials told the advisory council he chairs that the state agency concluded the wildfire risk map was not the impetus for any of those insurance policy decisions, noting that the companies have their own risk maps and assessment methods.

Nonetheless, Bennett said he understands that the state's "very problematic" rollout of the risk map last summer bred anger and skepticism.

That's troubling, he said, because the goal of Senate Bill 762 is not to punish property owners, but to help them not only recognize their wildfire risk — Bennett prefers the word "exposure" — but also to try to reduce that risk and protect their properties.

He said the legislation includes money to help homeowners create "defensible spaces" around their homes by, for instance, trimming trees and shrubs and removing tree needles and other combustible debris from their roofs and gutters. That work can both protect homes from fire and, potentially, reduce insurance rates rather than result in canceled policies.

Bennett said he worries that those laudable goals of the legislation were in effect "lost" in the fallout from the state's flawed risk map.

He understands why some people treated the map, and by extension the legislation that created it, as punitive rather than helpful, as they were intended to be.

"The map is supposed to be a tool for property owners to understand their risk, and a way to direct money to areas of high risk," Bennett said. "The time to work on protection is now, and the map should be a tool to do that."

He said Senate Bill 762 has already helped bolster firefighting capacity in rural areas, including in and around Baker County.

The North Powder Rural Fire Protection District, for instance, received $35,000 through the legislation to pay volunteers to be ready at the fire station during periods of high fire danger, Chief Colby Thompson said.

That enabled the volunteers to respond immediately to 19 fires during 2022, including blazes that briefly threatened homes near Medical Springs and Keating, Thompson said.

Wildfire risk map delayed

After last summer's controversy over the map, Oregon State Forester Cal Mukomoto, who is also director of the Oregon Department of Forestry, announced in early August that the map was withdrawn and would be revised.

The agency had intended to release a new version March 1, 2023, collect public comments over the next six months, then incorporate those comments into a final version that would be released in the fall of 2023.

But this week Mukumoto said a draft version of the map won't be done at least until late summer 2023.

One reason for the extended delay, Bennett said, is that as many as 11 bills introduced in the Legislature, which started its six-month session Jan. 17, could affect Senate Bill 762. Some of those bills call for doing away with the risk map altogether.

Bennett said that whether or not the state releases a revised risk map, he hopes the Forestry Department will continue to try to alert property owners to the potential threat that wildfires pose.

Although that might seem obvious, in the wake of the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon, as well as tragedies such as the destruction of Paradise, California, in 2018, Bennett worries that some residents don't recognize that their properties are at risk.

His ranch near Unity, for instance, is surrounded by irrigated fields and a county road, which would seem to create a substantial buffer against fire.

But Bennett said his home is within one and a quarter miles of relatively heavy fuels, in the form of sagebrush. And as many recent destructive fires around the West have shown, embers can ignite homes and buildings more than a mile from the main blaze.

Other concerns with map, legislation

Besides the claims about insurance, critics also noted that owners of property deemed at high or extreme risk for wildfire could be required to create a defensible space around their homes and outbuildings.

The legislation also proposes to impose more restrictive zoning laws on some properties at high fire risk.

State agencies have yet to write rules about enforcing those aspects of Senate Bill 762.

The map, though, proved to be the focus of concerns and criticism.

That was not altogether surprising, based on discussions that Bennett and the other members of the advisory council had in the months before the state released the risk 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, 2022, meeting, Mike Shaw, fire chief for the Department of Forestry, said the risk map "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.

Bennett said he saw the map only two days before its release on June 30, 2022.