Introducing Wildfire Wednesdays, 1000 Friends' weekly storytelling project aimed at empowering Oregonians to navigate life with wildfire.
Wildfire Wednesday launched ahead of Wildfire Awareness Month in May 2026. This storytelling project builds upon 1000 Friends of Oregon's longstanding work on wildfire across Oregon and the ongoing work of Mary Kyle McCurdy, our associate director and managing attorney, who also serves as a member of Oregon’s Wildfire Program Advisory Council.
We are seeing increased prevalence and severity of wildfire—and increased pressure from development interests to build in locations that are more wildfire-prone. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools in our statewide land use program that can help to mitigate risk and support communities living with wildfire.
So, each Wednesday for the foreseeable future, we will be publishing a news post about wildfire on our website, sharing it with our email subscribers, and on social media. You can check out our weekly #WildfireWednesday content on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We also invite you to join in the conversation. We would love to see and amplify your stories; please email us with your ideas!
We can’t afford to put our heads in the sand—as, frankly, many did when they responded to the fear-mongering campaign that successfully demanded that the legislature repeal Oregon’s wildfire hazard map. We all pay when wildfires happen—through our tax dollars, our health, our insurance rates, our utility bills, and more. A better, safer, and sustainable future is possible, but it calls for joining hands and working together.
Our land use conservation and development system has helped us avoid some of the most devastating impacts of wildfires (so far). But developers, private property interests, and corporations are increasingly pushing for the expansion of urban growth boundaries and allowing more commercial uses, tourist destinations, second homes, and subdivisions in the wildland-urban interface and other at-risk areas.
Wildfire-Ready Oregon is a new tool to help all Oregonians prepare their homes, families, and communities for wildfire – useful whether you’re new to wildfire season or you’ve lived in wildfire country for decades.
In recent years, Oregonians have experienced increased risks to health and livelihood, damage to natural resources, and destruction of homes and treasured parts of Oregon from longer and more severe wildfire seasons. But it doesn’t have to be this way!