Oregon homeowners who live in high-risk wildfire areas defined by the state must now follow new building codes and reduce vegetation around their homes, according to new “wildfire hazard maps” released Tuesday.
The maps’ release comes after a record-breaking wildfire season last year and firestorms in 2020, which killed nine people and destroyed thousands of homes.
According to Oregon law, the state-developed maps will have no effect on homeowners’ insurance rates. They create new rules for those who live in the most fire-prone areas that also border wildlands such as forests or grasslands.
The provisions affect 6% of the state’s approximately 1.9 million tax lots, down from an earlier version developed in 2022 but withdrawn after homeowners expressed concerns that it would raise insurance premiums.
Climate change is making wildfire seasons longer and more intense, and Oregon isn’t the only state trying to figure out how to manage the risk.
Washington and Colorado have also recently taken steps to reduce fire risk in their communities, and a new rule announced in California last week will require insurance companies to provide policies in high-risk wildfire areas in order to continue doing business in the state.
In Oregon, the new building and so-called defensible space codes will only affect approximately 106,000 tax lots. However, experts say it’s an important step toward identifying and protecting fire-prone areas as the state deals with record-breaking wildfires.
Since 2020, blazes have destroyed homes on the Oregon coast, just inland from the Pacific Ocean, in areas previously thought to be fireproof due to a wetter, cooler climate.
“After 2020, we can’t pretend anymore that this is just an issue for southwest and central Oregon,” Andy McEvoy, a faculty research assistant at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who worked on the map, told the Associated Press.
“All of those events really cried out for a statewide — a truly statewide — strategy to respond to wildfire risk.”
Wind-fueled fires over Labor Day weekend in 2020 were among the worst natural disasters in state history, killing nine people, destroying thousands of homes and other structures, and consuming more than 1,875 square miles (4,860 square kilometers).
The 2024 wildfire season was also historic. It cost Oregon more than $350 million, making it the most expensive on record, and it burned a record 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers), primarily on range and grazing land in the state’s rural east.
According to McEvoy, the maps will assist officials in assisting communities that require the most wildfire resources.
Reducing vegetation around homes to create a buffer zone of defensible space, as well as installing fire-resistant features like metal roofs or fiber cement siding, can improve a home’s fire resistance.
“If we manage our vegetation a certain way, if we build our structures out of certain materials, then we can increase the likelihood of that structure surviving,” he told me. “But we’re not going to change the probability of the fire occurring in the first place.”
The Oregon Department of Forestry released two maps depicting wildfire hazard levels and the wildland-urban interface, created by Oregon State University scientists.
A state law passed in 2023 prohibits insurers from canceling or declining to renew a homeowner insurance policy based on a wildfire hazard map produced by a state agency, or from increasing premiums. However, McEvoy pointed out that most insurers have been working on their own wildfire risk models for a long time.
“There’s very little in this map that hasn’t been illustrated or represented in other products produced by researchers or the insurance community themselves,” according to him.
Oregon fire officials and researchers revised the original wildfire hazard maps after receiving thousands of public comments and holding public meetings across the state.
McEvoy stated that significant changes included lowering the hazard status of irrigated farmland, as well as hay and pasture lands. The latter are frequently irrigated during haying and grazed for much of the fire season, reducing vegetation fuels on the landscape.
Wildfire hazard maps have been in place in California, Arizona, and New Mexico for several years. Last year, Washington lawmakers ordered the creation of a statewide wildfire risk map, and in 2023, Colorado passed legislation establishing a wildfire resiliency code board.
The adoption process for the defensible space codes, which will be overseen by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, and the building codes, which will be overseen by the Building Codes Division, will not begin until the wildfire hazard maps’ appeals period has ended. The Oregon Department of Forestry will notify the owners of affected tax lots.