FEBRUARY 23, 2015
SALEM, OREGON
Private timberland owners and the state officials charged
with protecting those lands are both in the dark over how consecutive bad fire
seasons will change the way Oregon pays to fight catastrophic wildfires.
For nearly four decades, Oregon has purchased an insurance
policy that kicks in when wildfires are catastrophic. It’s a unique setup similar
to car insurance.
The state has paid a premium of around $1 million and a $25
million deductible before the company chips in. The policy has saved the state
as much as $46 million since 1973.
With a month left before spring, the only thing that is
certain is that the state and landowners most likely will have to pony up if
they want the insurance this year, if Oregon gets a policy at all.
The state sent its top forester, Doug Decker, across the
Atlantic to meet face to face with brokers from Lloyd’s of London early this
month.
Even now, Decker says, the future is uncertain.
“They’ll be asking themselves the question what can they
afford to provide, and we’ll be asking the question what can we afford to pay,”
Decker said.
Lloyd’s officials said they don’t comment on individual
policies, but Decker said about a dozen brokers are crunching numbers and other
factors to see whether the company still finds Oregon worth insuring.
They’re likely to take into account what the state says is
its ability to extinguish about 95 percent of fires before they grow larger
than 10 acres . They’ll consider the cameras Oregon places in remote areas to
scout for fires.
But there’s another factor Lloyd’s may consider that is
working against the state: snowpack. Right now, there isn’t much.
“It’s abysmal,” said Kathie Dello, deputy director of the
Oregon Climate Service. “The outlook of the next few months is warmer than
normal. It looks pretty, it doesn’t look good for recovery in terms of
snowpack.”
Mountains in the Northwest that are typically well-coated by
snow are bare, and snow levels are close to record lows throughout the
Cascades. Precipitation levels are near normal, but it’s been too warm to snow.
Snowpack provides moisture and ground coverage in summer
months as temperatures rise. It doesn’t look like much of the West will get
that buffer this year.
There are other factors that go into whether land is
vulnerable to wildfires, such as soil moisture and midsummer rain, but those
are hard to predict.
Decker described his trip to London as absolutely necessary
to even give Oregon a shot at insurance coverage for this fire season. Even so,
it may be April before the state knows whether it’s on the hook if Oregon has
yet another bad fire season.
“We just have to remember that we’ve had two catastrophic
(fire seasons) here, and I would say that it’s not a sure thing that we will be
successful in finding that sweet spot,” Decker said.
The insurance question doesn’t only cover public land. Central
Oregon’s timberland owners chip in $1.70 per acre under the policy, and they’re
waiting to hear how much they’ll be charged this year.
“I have no idea what the dollar figures will be,” said Chris
Johnson, vice president of timber operations for Fidelity National Timber
Resources, a company based in Whitefish, Montana, that has an office in Bend.
A subsidiary of the company, Cascade Timberlands, just sold
most of the forestland that burned last June in the 6,908-acre Two Bulls Fire
near Bend. The fire was just one in what ballooned into a big year that is
likely to have soaked up the entire $25 million insurance deductible for a
second straight season when the state finishes counting costs.
Cascade Timberlands sold about 200,000 acres of timberland
in Central Oregon — in areas northwest of Bend, near La Pine and Gilchrist and
by Chemult and Chiloquin.
While the wildfire insurance helped the Oregon Department of
Forestry last year cover some costs, it didn’t help Cascade Timberlands and
other private timber holders recoup their losses.
Johnson said Cascade Timberlands was able to salvage about
two-thirds of the acreage burned in the Two Bulls Fire, but the fire changed
the timing of when to harvest. It will be another 80 years until the trees
growing there will be merchantable again.
“It set the clock back quite a ways,” Johnson said.
The situation in Oregon represents larger changes to how the
state and federal government are approaching wildfire funding in the wake of
record-setting wildfires.
A group of senators largely from the West proposed a bill
last month that would change the way Congress funds fire suppression.
Currently, when the fire budget is depleted, the federal
government then takes money for fighting fires from areas of the budget that
would prevent wildfires by treating forests and reducing fuels. A bill
sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, would change
that.
“Catastrophic wildfires threaten homes and lives across
Oregon and the West year after year,” Wyden said. “The money to fight those
fires falls short nearly every time.”
Wyden and Crapo’s bill would allow big wildfires in federal
jurisdiction to be funded through a separate disaster account.
In Oregon, lawmakers are offering new ways to look at the
damage caused by some large wildfires.
Sen. Doug Whitsett and Rep. Gail Whitsett, a Klamath Falls
Republican couple representing rural south and central stretches of Oregon,
have a bill that would require the Department of Forestry to file a report on
property losses for any fire 1,000 acres and larger.
The hope, they say, is that the reports would put attention
on actual losses endured in a blaze.
“I think we have a disconnect with a lot of people in urban
areas that have no comprehension of what a wildfire really is,” Doug Whitsett
said.