Natural hazard mitigation — including wildfire — hinges on funding

Young is now visiting the various jurisdictions within the county seeking approval of the NHMP, a step that must be completed before the plan is implemented. For the City of Hood River, that meant passing Resolution 2025-10, “the Hood River County National Hazard Mitigation Plan and the City of Hood River Addendum,” as described in the meeting packet.

The Addendum for the City of Hood River designates a steering committee and a convener to oversee the development and implementation of action items, and Young thanked those who worked on the plan on behalf of the city.

The NHMP “is one of the foundational documents for emergency management,” he said. Council passed the resolution unanimously.

But his overview of the future of those plans offered more questions than answers due to uncertainty around federal funding.

“Our landscape for doing mitigation work is changing by the day,” he said. “When I spoke to you in November, we were talking about doing a big community wildfire defense grant ask; we were not able to do that because the funding formula for that changed midstream.

“So we made an application for a much smaller community wildfire defense grant … We since have made an application to an [University of Oregon RARE] AmeriCorps program to try to bring some folks in to help us in that area, and AmeriCorps also seems to be having some issues at the moment with the federal government,” he continued. “… I can’t tell you what we’re likely able to do, particularly in the natural hazard mitigation area, which is an uncomfortable position for all of us, and I really do appreciate that you are really on the firing line of some really significant natural hazards without a lot of support to be able to deal with those.”

In a follow-up email May 8, Young told Columbia Gorge News that since the city council meeting, AmeriCorps program funding had been terminated.

During the meeting, Mayor Paul Blackburn asked about wildfire catastrophe funding over the summer months. Young said complex incident teams are down 10% nationwide, with 40 such teams available across the country this year.

“My impression from the Forest Service, from ODF (Oregon Department of Forestry), from OSFM (Oregon State Fire Marshal) is that they’re working really hard to identify local resources that they can call on,” he said. “And really, I think the difficulty is going to be in backfill — if firefighters or management teams come to support a large fire, who comes in behind them to makes sure their usual work is covered?”

County emergency management will continue looking for ways to prepare for natural disasters, he said. Work this summer will be focused on community-based, grassroots campaigns with messaging in English and Spanish, though support will be more difficult now without AmeriCorps volunteers to help organize.