State finalizes redo of wildfire hazard maps, prepares new rules for high-risk property owners

By: Alex Baumhardt – January 8, 2025 ||  OREGON CAPITAL CHRONICLE

Oregon fire experts have finalized their redo of state maps of wildfire hazard areas, showing that about 106,000 tax lots are in high-risk spots that could be subject to new building and landscape codes.

Those property owners, who hold nearly 6% of the nearly 2 million tax lots in the state, could be subject to new building codes and landscape regulations designed to protect properties from fire. State officials said they will get a “hefty packet of information” in the mail in the next few days explaining what happens next, according to a news release from the Oregon Department of Forestry. The notices will include information about how owners can appeal the hazard designation if they feel it’s without merit.

Officials at the Oregon Department of Forestry and scientists at Oregon State University, who collaborated on the new maps, announced Tuesday they had finalized them after a yearlong overhaul that included a public comment period. The maps put all tax lots into a low, medium or high hazard level. Drafts of the maps were shared publicly in July, and the forestry department received nearly 2,000 comments. The researchers and agencies involved in the mapping also held joint public meetings in Grants Pass, The Dalles, Medford, La Grande and Redmond and shared the draft maps with county commissions and county planners.

“The wildfire hazard map is informed by decades of research on the nature of wildfire, where it begins, why it exists, and what the challenges are,” Andy McEvoy, a wildfire scientist at Oregon State University, said in a news release from the university. “The wildfire hazard map is intended to provide property owners and policymakers with an objective foundation for making decisions.”

The new maps are built on ones that originally debuted in 2022. Those were quickly taken offline just months after being released following public backlash over many areas classified as high-risk. Property owners saw the map as a state attempt to regulate their properties, and it coincided with some insurers raising premiums and choosing not to renew or write new wildfire policies.

In the new maps, some grass and ranch lands are no longer considered at high-risk depending on what they’re used for and on whether, and how often, they’re irrigated.

The maps are not to be used by insurers in Oregon for property coverage or rate determinations, according to Oregon Senate Bill 82, which passed in 2023.

Alex Baumhardt covers education and the environment for the Oregon Capital Chronicle. Before coming to Oregon, she was a national radio producer and reporter covering education for American Public Media’s documentaries and investigations unit, APM Reports. She earned a master’s degree in digital and visual media as a U.S. Fulbright scholar in Spain, and has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.