2007 Underwood fire

State’s Wildfire Urban Interface Project Continues

The State of Oregon continues to refine its Wildfire Risk Map, a requirement from the 2021 passage of Senate Bill 762 concerning the Wildland Urban Interface. The legislation is a result of significant changes in Oregon’s wildfire environment in the past decade, with climate change bringing hotter, drier summers and historic levels of drought. SB 762 established a new comprehensive wildfire preparedness and resiliency program throughout the State.

The legislation contains various elements such as the creation of a statewide Wildfire Risk Map; defensible space, land use, and building code regulations; health systems for smoke; and emergency response and disaster recovery rules. Eleven state agencies are tasked with implementing various components of the legislation. The Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), the agency responsible for the development of the Wildfire Risk Map, withdrew its initial map released June 30 along with related notifications, citing significant concerns from the public.

All property owners located in high or extreme risk areas received letters when the original Wildfire Risk Map was released and given 60 days to appeal their designation. The original map showed most of Hood River County land rated as either “high” or “extreme” risk for wildfire. All properties located in the Wildfire Urban Interface (WUI) at these risk levels will be subject to new defensible space and fire hardening (building code) regulations now in development. (learn how to defend your home)

The decision to withdraw the WUI map does not impact the code development and adoption processes currently underway through Office of the State Fire Marshal for defensible space or Building Codes Division for home hardening.

Hood River County’s Community Development Department will oversee defensible space, land use and building code regulations. New defensible space code is scheduled to be completed this December with an effective date announced in 2023. Fire hardening requirements are expected to be adopted on October 1, 2022, and effective April 1, 2023.

“The withdrawal of the map is only a temporary setback,” said Eric Walker, director of County Community Development. “The State will release a new map in the future and elements of the State legislation continue to move forward.”

The State Forester said in a press release that defining the Wildland Urban Interface and assigning a risk classification at the property ownership level was required to be completed less than a year after the bill was adopted. With 1.8 million tax lots across Oregon, “We knew the first iteration of an undertaking of this scale and complexity wouldn’t be perfect, but we have been and continue to be committed to improving the map and our processes related to it,” said State Forester Cal Mukumoto. (Read the ODF press release here.)

ODF will continue to work with Oregon State University on refinements to improve the accuracy of risk classification assignments on the Wildfire Risk Map based on input from property owners thus far. Once this round of refinements is complete, the agency plans to bring a draft of the updated map to communities for discussion and input. After another round of revisions based on local input, the map will be finalized. When that’s complete, ODF will release a revised map and issue new notices to property owners in the extreme and high-risk classifications, which will start a new appeal period.