In response to residents complaining about the wildfire risk map in a public information session last month, he said the lawmakers who voted for Senate Bill 762 last year decided they should move quickly and “correct as we go” rather than wait years to start taking precautionary steps. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, championed the bill as a way to prepare the state for hotter, drier summers and more fire risk that come along with climate change. The idea was to identify properties that face the most wildfire risk and apply new fire safety requirements in high-risk areas to protect homes and communities from future fires. The mapping process is a required part of a wildfire preparedness package state lawmakers passed last year in response to the wildfires that burned 4,000 homes and more than a million acres of Oregon in 2020.
There was absolutely no consideration for how impactful this could be.” … There’s no protection for the homeowners. “Can anybody tell me how I’m going to be impacted financially? What’s going to happen with my insurance? No. “For some people this could be catastrophic if they can no longer afford their homeowners insurance, and they could lose their home,” a Southern Oregon resident said at the session. Property owners are blaming the state for lowering their property values, raising their insurance rates and mistakenly classifying properties in high fire-risk zones in the new map.Īt a virtual public information session on July 27, more than 1,200 people tuned in to hear a litany of complaints about a lack of information about how properties were categorized and what a high fire risk classification will mean for them financially.
It has a backlog of 1,700 voicemails from the public that haven’t been heard because the forestry department staff is also working to fight several fires across the state. The agency has received 750 appeals from property owners who say they were mislabeled on the wildfire risk map and more than 2,000 comments. The announcement comes after thousands of public comments and complaints about the state-mandated map poured into the forestry department’s inbox. “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.” “We know how important it is to get this right,” Oregon State Forester Cal Mukumoto, said in a statement. On Thursday, the agency announced it will withdraw the wildfire risk map released in June and cancel the notices to property owners placed in high or extreme fire risk categories.
0 kommentar(er)
