U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) gathered with local elected officials at Bend City Hall Monday afternoon to discuss wildfire response and preparedness as a smattering of large infernos continue to burn across Oregon.
After attending fire briefings in Warm Springs and Prineville Sunday and Monday, Wyden criticized the federal government’s response while praising the firefighters on the front lines.
“The so-called response by Washington, D.C., if you ask my opinion, is basically half-baked for the people of Oregon,” Wyden said.
He was flanked by state Rep. Emerson Levy (D-Bend), Sisters Mayor Jennifer Letz, Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler and Deschutes County Commissioner Phil Chang.
Wyden met with fire officials on the Rowe Creek Complex, a set of intermingled wildfires that’s burned 368,000 acres in total between Prineville and Fossil. It’s forced evacuations across four counties and closed U.S. Highway 26 since a July 15 lightning strike sparked several blazes that crossed paths. It’s 79% contained as of Monday.
Some 1,615 firefighters are battling the blaze. Still, Wyden said fire managers told him they have about half the equipment and personnel needed to fight the fire.
“For these folks today to say they have half of what they really need to deal with — it is an indictment of the current system that I’m going to stay focused on changing,” Wyden said.
For weeks the Pacific Northwest has been at max capacity for wildfire fighting resources, according to daily reports from the National Interagency Coordination Center. There are more than 18,000 firefighters deployed across Oregon and Washington, with 46 large uncontained fires burning.
Wyden didn’t detail plans to increase firefighting capacity, but linked what he described a shortage of middle managers like captains and crew bosses to federal agency cuts delivered by the Trump Administration over the last year and a half.
Oregon has brought in middle managers from out of state through mutual aid agreements, according to an Aug. 3 Facebook post by the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Levy said the legislature prepared for the fire season by setting aside $86 million in appropriations to pay the state’s wildfire bill without going into an emergency special session, which was the case after a record-breaking wildfire season in 2024.
“It is likely that in September the agency, ODF, will come before us and ask for all of that,” Levy said.
Levy said the state is still waiting on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse the state for $91 million in wildfire fighting costs from last year, which is a strain on the state’s budget.
This year, FEMA has approved response grants for a handful of large wildfires in Oregon through the Fire Management Assistance Program, which pays back states for 75% of the cost of firefighting. But the agency caught criticism from Oregon’s Democratic senators earlier this year when it denied assistance for two large wildfires, including the Rowe Creek Complex. FEMA reversed that decision on Aug. 1.
On Friday, the Senate passed a Wyden-led bill extending tax relief to victims of natural disasters.
Wyden also helped orchestrate a 2018 bill in Congress that set up a new fund for wildfire fighting. The agreement, which is set to expire next year, is meant to stop firefighting costs from eating into budgets for forest thinning and prescribed burning to help prevent out-of-control wildfires.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
It would be great if the federal government would stop taking tax dollars from the US coffers to gild door knobs and blow up other countries…. As it stands now, replacing our munitions will take years and add trillions of costs causing the repeated refrain from the WH “we can’t afford Medicare, Medicaid SNAP, and Headstart”.
Apparently we need to build missiles and battleships instead. Firefighting resources are definitely not on the radar for this administration. Thank you for fighting for what we need out West.