Marty Wilde: What’s FAIR about wildfire?

by Marty Wilde

If you want to see what happens when a state treats wildfire as an act of God and prevention as an individual choice instead of a shared responsibility, look south.

Californians built deeper into the woods for years. Owners and counties skipped consistent defensible space work. Thousands of homes fell off the standard insurance market and into the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) market, state’s high-cost insurer of last resort plan.

The painful costs did not affect only the highest-risk areas. The resulting losses and reinsurance costs pushed premiums up for everyone who remained in California’s voluntary market.

Oregon stands on the precipice. Our voluntary market still looks healthy. But premiums are rising fast in fire-exposed areas, and more owners are getting non-renewal notices attributed to “fire risk.”

To avoid a California-style crunch, we should be honest about fairness. Your choices are yours, and so should be the costs. In high-risk wildfire zones, keeping Firewise status should be the price of staying off the FAIR Plan.

How FAIR plans stop being fair

A FAIR plan is supposed to be a safety net. It is an industry-funded pool which offers basic fire coverage when no private carrier will write a policy. Coverage limits run lower. Prices run higher. The plan exists to keep the truly uninsurable from going bare.

California shows what happens when that backstop becomes the default. Development pushed mile after mile into the wildland-urban interface. Enforcement of defensible space rules stayed inconsistent. Carriers pulled out of ZIP codes or left the state entirely. Whole communities became insurance deserts, where everyone had to buy FAIR plan insurance.

Catastrophe losses and reinsurance costs increased the rates everyone pays. Owners far from the flames paid more. Owners in the worst zones got shunted into an underpowered backstop that still ran on everyone else’s money.

The problem was a system which treated irresponsible behavior as cost-free.

Name the real fight

A few years ago, and contrary to my advice on the subject, Oregon built a statewide wildfire hazard map. After intense backlash, the Legislature repealed it outright in 2025 through Senate Bill 83. The same law stripped the state defensible space and home-hardening building rules tied to the map.

High-risk owners fought the map because it threatened a subsidy they have enjoyed for years. Low-risk homeowners cover part of the cost of insuring high-risk homes through statewide rates. They also fund fire prevention and response through their property taxes.

A risk map makes that transfer visible. Some point to Oregon’s libertarian tradition to defend the right to skip prevention. Fair enough. A person can choose not to clear brush or harden a roof. But that choice does not come with a right to bill the neighbors for the added risk.

Draw the lines locally, not from Salem

The wildfire hazard map died for a reason. Rural Oregon did not trust a hazard line drawn by a state agency, then bolted onto building codes with no local say. Repeal won 50-1 in the House. Any honest proposal has to learn from that vote.

A way forward is to require that counties and rural fire protection districts draw their own high-risk boundaries, using a clear state standard and an open, parcel-by-parcel process that any owner can appeal. The state sets the definition for what high-risk means. The fire chief who answers the call decides which ridgelines carry the designation.

Responsible behavior = cheaper rates

In a locally designated high-risk zone, an owner who keeps certified Firewise status gets to stay in the standard market. Falling short does not cost an owner the right to buy coverage. It costs the right to buy that coverage with a subsidy from more responsible neighbors.

This is a contract, not a mandate on how to live. The state does not tell anyone to clear brush or clean off a roof. The state says the cost of skipping the work belongs to the owner who skipped it, not to the neighbors.

Owners who do the work earn a real reward. Insurers would be required to offer a guaranteed, posted discount for a certified property, so prevention shows up as money back.

Rural fire districts should run the inspections. They answer the calls and know how fuel, slope, wind, and access interact on a given road. The state sets a minimum standard built on the national Firewise USA framework and the state fire marshal’s model code.

High-risk properties get inspected on a five-year cycle. Every property sale statewide also triggers a fire inspection at the point of sale, folded into the pre-sale process the way a pest inspection works now. We all want to know what we are getting into when we buy a house.

Let insurers pay, and keep the data clean

Insurers, not homeowners, should pay for inspections in high-risk zones. To write property insurance policies in Oregon, insurers must help fund the risk assessment that makes the business possible. This raises no new state tax. The money comes from insurer fees and federal hazard-mitigation dollars Oregon for which already qualifies. Insurers recover the cost through their overall rates, not through a separate surcharge on the people doing the right thing. As a bonus, it helps stabilize rural fire departments.

Distrust sank the last map, so wall off the data in statute. Inspection results serve two purposes only, which are certification and insurance. The law forbids using that data for new zoning, land-use restrictions, or any future regulation reached for later.

Pair the obligation with help. Fund a mitigation account that offers grants, rebates, or zero-interest loans for vegetation removal, roof upgrades, and ember-resistant vents, with lower-income households receiving more support. Give fire districts and inspectors a liability shield for good-faith work, or small districts will refuse the role. Build a real appeal, with the burden of proof on the program, not the owner.

Write it to survive the legislature

It pays to start small. Run a pilot in two or three willing counties, measure results, then expand. Sunset the program in five years and force a review. If the pilot does not lower risk and steady the market, let it expire.

Pay less now or pay more later

We are living on borrowed time. In Deschutes County alone, FAIR Plan enrollment has more than doubled since 2021. We are one bad fire season away from our property insurance bills inflating to California levels.

We all pay for wildfire. We can pay less in advance in prevention or we pay more later, in lost neighborhoods and insurance markets that don’t work for the people who need them most. California shows what happens when a state waits too long to tie prevention to protection.

Oregon does not have to end up there. To keep our FAIR Plan a backstop instead of a way of life, make Firewise status the ticket to lower rates, let local people draw the lines, and give everyone a fair shot at earning it.

Marty Wilde represented central Lane and Linn counties in the Oregon legislature. For more of his Letters From a Recovering Politician, subscribe at https://martywilde.substack.com/subscribe.

Copyright (c) 2026 Marty Wilde. All rights reserved. Reprinted by KEPW-Whole Community News with the author’s permission.