The Oregon Department of Forestry鈥檚 readiness and preparedness budget will now be approximately $55.6 million for the 2020 wildfire season. The board's increase of $3.6 million will be used for aviation and ground resources to help fight wildfires.
鈥淚 hope that work will continue at some point because I don't believe our general fund is in a position or will be any time in the future to continue to fight these fires,鈥� Holvey said.
In 2019, Gov. Kate Brown appointed a wildfire council to research and during the upcoming wildfire season. The for its recommendations.
Brown followed up by calling for the 2020 legislative session to direct $25 million toward the package鈥檚 goals, but it failed to win passage because of on a carbon reduction bill.
Governor鈥檚 office spokesperson Nikki Fisher said in a statement late Thursday that fire seasons are only going to get more and more challenging. Studies suggest the comprehensive costs of wildfire are many times greater than the immediate costs of firefighting. Fisher said the coronavirus pandemic had made things worse.
Social distancing and other measures aimed at preventing the coronavirus from spreading have led to the cancellation of prescribed burning that happens during the spring to thin out underbrush and other built-up fuel for forest fires.
Oregon Department of Forestry Chief of Fire Protection Doug Grafe said drought conditions are making for a high risk of wildfire in a season that could get underway as early as May.
鈥淥n top of that, COVID-19 will cause challenges for us,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e will need to add additional spacing as we mobilize resources, ensure enough vehicles to mobilize resources to meet social distancing requirements, expand cleaning capacity and sanitation resources.鈥�
鈥淲here we typically could camp 1,000 firefights in a small field, we鈥檒l need to spread those resources out and do a lot of work that we can do, remotely as much as possible,鈥� Grafe said.
Oregon State University鈥檚 Faculty Research Assistant Rachel Houtman said wildfire seasons are hard to predict.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 know what the next fire season is going to look like; we can kind of guess and predict but our models aren鈥檛 perfect,鈥� Houtman said. That makes it difficult to know how much money to set aside for firefighting costs.
Budgeting ahead is especially tricky this year. Training has been upended because of the pandemic, as has prescribed burning. Houtman said that will put fire crews on a more reactive footing when there are big fires that threaten human lives or property.
鈥淭his inability to do mitigation either due to funding or due to sheltering in place is going to drive us more to that reactive instead of proactive behavior,鈥� she said. Clarification (April 24): An earlier version did not clearly state the time frame that the Oregon Governor's Council on Wildfire Response had identified when it proposed a $4 billion spending package. The council estimated a $4 billion cost over 20 years for its recommendations.
Copyright 2020 Oregon Public Broadcasting.
