A helicopter carries water to fire behind a ranch near Ukiah as part of the effort against the Battle Mountain Complex of blazes in Umatilla County. (Courtesy of Northwest Interagency Coordination Center)
As Oregon heads into another hot weekend, Oregon House Republicans are calling on the state Legislature to reform forest management and logging policies they say would prevent large fires from starting and spreading.
In a letter sent Wednesday, Republican Reps. Jeff Helfrich of Hood River, Ed Diehl of Stayton, and E. Werner Reschke of Klamath Falls said lawmakers should roll back regulations and conservation plans to allow more logging on state forests, limit liabilities for volunteer firefighters who might cause injury or property damage while on the job and prohibit and sweep homeless encampments in fire prone areas.
“We all support responsible environmental practices that protect our forests for future generations,” said Reschke in a statement. “But these fires are the result of 40 years of bad policy choices that have gone past conservation and put the lives of Oregonians at risk.”