April Standafer loves her peaceful life in Corvallis. She walks her basset hound. She takes tap dancing classes. She grows pumpkins outside her apartment door. She meets her friends for coffee. She found a good therapist. She loves the sense of community. And she even convinced her mom to follow her to Oregon from California.
“It’s big enough that you don’t know every single person but it still has a small-town vibe,” said Standafer, 38.
The former Californian fled to Oregon after the 2018 Camp Fire obliterated the town of Paradise. The place she once called home was a mountain hamlet in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California. The deadly fire killed 85 people, destroyed more than 18,000 structures — including 9,000 homes and eight schools — burned more than 150,000 acres and left about 35,000 people homeless, according to a case summary by the state.
Now experts say parts of Oregon, among other expanses of the country, could see the same fate as Paradise and the state is not prepared.
Oregon has a 92% greater chance than other states to experience urban wildfires that destroy large swaths of homes, not just grasslands and trees. California has a 98% risk. The risk assessment was created by the USDA Forest Service and Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group, to understand the probability of a wildfire burning in a certain area, how much vegetative fuel is in that area and how close that risk is to residential and commercial buildings.
As wildfire seasons continue to worsen year to year, the flames creep closer and closer to urban areas, especially in Western states where residents appreciate life tucked into the beauty of the landscape.
Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, a Democrat who represents southern Jackson County, said she believes the state needs to create an actual budget for wildfire mitigation and long-term housing recovery. In Oregon, the 2020 Labor Day fires were the worst in the state's history, destroying 4,326 homes and burning over a million acres. At that time, Marsh said, Oregon had room to wiggle in the state budget and federal relationships were supportive with emergency funding coming in.
“It scares the heck out of me to think of that kind of loss happening this summer when the state is very stretched financially and the federal government may not be as willing to partner,” she said. “That should alarm all of us.”
The bottom line, Marsh and other state leaders say, is a robust, standing fund for mitigation and recovery. While there has been proposed legislation in recent years to do just that, none have survived a legislative session.
Embers ignite homes
Standafer knows what it is like to live in one of those risk zones. Now she, and Oregon leaders, hope policymakers take note of what happened in California.
Just before 8 a.m. on Nov. 8, 2018, Standafer and her then-husband quickly piled into their car with their two floppy-eared basset hounds. Standafer grabbed her purse and the ceramic paw imprint of her first dog but nothing else. The sky glowed orange but still she thought she would see her home again.
Typically it took 20 minutes to drive from Paradise down to Chico, the nearest city. But on this day, the trek would take more than nine hours. They began the journey in their own car, eventually abandoning it to run on foot, jumping into other cars along the way in hopes of inching along a little faster only to end up back on foot.
Traffic in both lanes was gridlocked. There were only two paths out of Paradise and neither were promising. The crackling radio station told listeners to evacuate immediately.
Standafer called her mom, who also lived in Paradise, and tried to keep her voice steady.
“I called and said ‘hey, there is a lot of traffic, I want you to leave now OK? I don’t want you to get stuck. But don’t worry, we will meet up in Chico, OK?’”
As Standafer sobbed, their car crawled along as the orange glow became darker. Just before 11 a.m., they saw flames burst out of the tree line. A sheriff's deputy pounded on people’s windshields yelling for them to abandon their cars and run.
“It felt like we were in an oven,” Standafer said. “There were embers flying everywhere. At that point, it started to get really dark outside. Everything around us was on fire. The houses on both sides (of the street) were on fire. We were completely surrounded.”
Most home loss during wildfires is from embers that can travel hundreds of miles before sparking mulch, a wood fence or other ignitable materials near homes, said Kelly Pohl, associate director of Headwaters Economics, which conducted and analyzed the urban wildfire risk data.
“The assumption is often that a wall of fire destroys homes,” Pohl said. “But embers are causing most home loss and that is why we need 5 feet of noncombustible materials along the foundations of homes. We need clean gutters and roofs free from pine needles. We need this work done at community scale or else everyone will be vulnerable.”
It is much more affordable for the state to help homeowners protect their homes with cleanup assistance than it is to rebuild after a disaster, Pohl said. While Utah, Colorado and California have building codes that demand new homes be built with wildfires in mind, Oregon has yet to codify those rules, though the state started down that path after the 2020 Labor Day fires.
Marsh said the state learned from Oregon’s 2020 wildfires how vulnerable homes in urban areas are. Wildfires do not just live in forests and grasslands.
“We need a state plan around mitigation and prevention that would allow us to invest in communities in a more expedited way,” she said. “We have authorized some of those programs, but some things are farther along than others.”
The state has funded some mitigation that has allowed communities to help their residents create defensible space around their homes by clearing out brush, bushes or other ignitable materials.
“A home defensible space program will be on the ground in another six months probably,” Marsh said. “But the funding we have identified is not enough to do the work at scale. We need to use the money we have to bond out or help us raise more money in other ways.”
The cost to survive
As Standafer and her partner ran, cars caught on fire and exploded. The world spun around them and yet the minutes dragged by. Vicious winds whipped embers into brush and onto homes. They saw a nursing home burn down. A bus attempting to carry people to safety caught fire. Pets were separated from their owners. Senior citizens with mobility challenges struggled to flee on foot. Large pieces of burning debris fell around them. Smoldering ash singed parts of Standafer’s pajamas. Restaurants were already burned to the ground.
Standafer climbed into a fourth vehicle that attempted to drive them to safety. This time, they made it.
By 5:30 p.m., Standafer and her partner arrived in Chico and reunited with her mom.
It was “the strangest feeling of my life,” Standafer wrote in an impact statement that was used as part of the lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California, which was found responsible for the neglected electrical transmission lines that sparked and caused the fire.
“I had just cheated death and now the sky was blue,” she wrote. “I turned and looked back at the huge cloud of black and the orange clouds with the firefighting airplanes. On the horizon I also saw helicopters flying around, and with that looked one last time at what used to be my life.”
In the weeks that followed, Standafer and her partner stayed with work friends who had available space — there weren't any available hotel rooms or apartment units as everyone in the community needed the same thing. The state and FEMA set up a one-stop shop for people to get new copies of licenses and birth certificates, clothes, food and other support. Standafer’s dogs were very sick from the smoke they inhaled and were seen daily at a nearby vet clinic. Both lived. Standafer’s insurance replaced her car and she got a few thousands dollars from her renters insurance. The Salvation Army gave $2,000 for new furniture, and United Way gave $800 to spend on anything. Standafer received money within weeks from FEMA to help cover move-in costs for a new apartment. Eventually, she received a payout from the Pacific Gas and Electric lawsuit that allowed her to start over in Oregon.
Following Oregon’s 2020 wildfires, similar support was set up in communities impacted by the wildfires, though many victims criticized that financial support as slow to come. Marsh said the state learned a lot from that experience. She wants a response-and-recovery blueprint to be created based on lessons learned.
“We need to put a tool kit together so that communities don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Marsh said. “They can receive the packet and understand what programs are available and how people can access support. We have not yet packaged that information and we should do that.”
But a tool kit is useless if there isn’t enough funding for the supportive programs.
“We know people need cash and support soon after a disaster to rebuild,” Marsh said. “We need a wildfire fund that just puts money in people’s hands, a fund that is different from investment made into clean up or to rebuild housing in the long term, or water and septic system rebuild. Those are different discussions.”
Ed Flick, Oregon Department of Human Services Office of Resilience and Emergency Management director, said the overwhelming costs of wildfires will surely place stress on the state’s budget in the coming years. Need will continue to exceed resources available, he said.
Flick’s office was created after the 2020 Labor Day fires. While his office allows the state to better coordinate support for communities, he said, there is not enough funding to be able to respond to wildfires without having to ask the Legislature for emergency one-time funding in the middle of each disaster. Seeking emergency funding mid-disaster slows support and recovery response.
In California, the state created a $21 billion fund to help victims rebuild their lives after wildfire loss. The funding comes from fees utility companies now pay and can only be used by wildfire victims if the fire was specifically caused by an utility company.
“It’s hard to compare because California housing costs are greater than ours and we want funding to be for victims no matter what caused the fire,” Marsh said. “But we need a fund that is open to any wildfire survivor, and utility companies should contribute to that fund, but we still need to do the math on what we can reasonably project what loss might look like and what people will need.”
Were you a victim of a wildfire in Oregon? We want to hear from you. Email nicole.hayden@lee.net.
© 2026 Corvallis Gazette-Times, Ore.. Visit www.gazettetimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
