Watching news accounts of the California fires, and the monumental catastrophe unfolding in San Diego County, I can't help but think of similar risks right here in Central Oregon, and of the relationship between land use planning and natural disasters.

As I often do when I want to learn more about the impacts of land use planning in California, I turn to the California Planning and Development Report a publication I once wrote for. The paper's publisher, Bill Fulton, is one of California's preeminent planning gurus, and is someone who can always be counted to provide an astute assessment of trends in land use and urban planning. Fulton offers a few observations:

Southern California is in flames again – it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even remember which fire the soot on my car is coming from – and makes me wonder once again why we’ve given up on land use planning as a way to reduce fire risk in such a fire-prone region.

As I write this, the current conflagration has cost more than 1,000 homes and forced the evacuation of more than a half-million people. Will Californians come out of this catastrophic event thinking that we need to use land use planning to avoid fire-prone areas?

I doubt it, no matter how much devastation we see on television, because over the past few years we’ve moved in the opposite direction on fires. We’re not trying to avoid hazardous areas. We’re trying to fireproof ourselves instead.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

Fulton's perspective rings true for Central Oregon as well, as we face the prospect of more resorts and subdivisions in our forested foothills. Despite the obvious risks of loss of life and possession, there's the incredible cost of fighting fires and dramatically altering management regimes for our forests, not to mention reduced funds for and emphasis on wildlife management, trail maintenance, and other activities. Yet, development pressure persists.

Fire season is over here, but as this catastrophe continues to unfold, plans are in the works for at least four large-scale destination resorts deep in our forests and pressure is mounting to expand Bend in a Westward direction and into the forests there. So far Central Oregon has managed to avoid any significant loss of life and property damage, but every year with more and more development, the risks and costs increase.

The Bulletin printed yet another article on fire risks in the Deschutes National Forest, "Sisters Wildfire patterns could happen elsewhere" on October 18th. In the print version of the article, there's a great map that shows recent fires around Sisters, near Black Butte Ranch, near where two resorts have been proposed on the Metolius as well as near where a large-scale development has been proposed in the northern reaches of the Skyline Forest.

"Every year it's like Groundhog Day," Jinny Pitman an employee with the Sisters Ranger District told the Bulletin. Meaning every year, almost on queue, tens of thousands of acres of this forest burn. The pattern is expected to continue, say experts, and move south from the sites of past burns down towards the Skyline Forest and beyond.

According to Fulton, "If there’s one, um, blazing bright spot in all this, it’s Riverside County. Thanks partly to new state fire hazard maps, Riverside is taking fire risk seriously – and considering the possibility of creating a fire hazard zone similar to the 100-year floodplain that would not permit development."

That's a great idea, and the kind of policy that makes a whole lot of sense in Central Oregon's forested regions. "So not everybody has given up," says Fulton, "[a]nd that’s a good thing. Because surely if there’s one thing that land use planning is well-suited for, it’s mapping out hazards and helping to avoid them.

"California has, as they say, a 'fire-driven ecology'", writes Fulton, which is also true for the eastern Cascades. "To me, that means soot on my car is OK. But subdivisions in the forest don’t make much sense."