A new study has found that hundreds of communities across Oregon and Washington face significantly higher wildfire risk than previously understood — and that the communities most at risk are often the least equipped to protect themselves. The research, published this week, used updated hazard modeling and social vulnerability data to identify gaps between where fire risk is greatest and where resources to address it are most limited.

Key Findings

Researchers found that communities scoring high on social vulnerability indicators — including lower incomes, fewer English speakers, less access to transportation, and smaller local fire departments — were disproportionately exposed to elevated wildfire hazard. These communities tend to be smaller, often with fewer than 5,000 buildings, and are concentrated in drier areas of the Northwest.

Among the communities identified as high-risk in the new analysis are Warm Springs, Oregon, and Goldendale, Washington. Study co-author Chris Dunn noted that these towns have "slightly lower wildfire exposure than some nearby, better-resourced communities like Bend and Leavenworth, but they experience greater social vulnerability and therefore are likely to experience greater impacts if a fire occurred."

The Gap Between Risk and Resources

The study found that protective capacity — the ability to harden homes, maintain defensible space, evacuate effectively, and recover after a fire — is heavily shaped by access to financial and institutional resources. Wealthier communities with established fire safe councils, strong local government, and proximity to large fire departments tend to have better outcomes even when facing comparable hazard levels.

Home hardening and landscape-level fire prevention, robust smoke management plans, and adequate staffing of local fire stations are all driven in large part by residents' and governments' access to resources. The researchers found that smaller, rural, and lower-income communities consistently score lower on all of these protective factors.

Washington's Home Hardening Framework

Washington state has taken steps to address the structural dimension of wildfire risk through its home hardening framework, which pairs adoption authority with community-level mapping support. The International Code Council highlighted Washington's approach as one example of how states can enable local communities to systematically address the building features and site conditions that make structures most vulnerable to ember ignition — the primary way homes catch fire during wildfires.

Embers can travel miles ahead of an active fire front, landing on rooftops, in gutters, and against siding. Key hardening measures include:

  • Installing ember-resistant vents and screening
  • Using Class A fire-rated roofing materials
  • Replacing wood decking with non-combustible or ignition-resistant materials
  • Clearing gutters of debris and maintaining defensible space
  • Enclosing the area under decks and porches

What Communities Can Do

Researchers emphasized that wildfire risk reduction does not require large capital investments from every household. Community-level coordination — neighborhood cleanups, shared evacuation planning, and fire safe council participation — can meaningfully reduce collective risk even where individual household capacity is limited. Oregon's Community Wildfire Protection Plan process and Washington's Firewise USA program both offer frameworks for organizing this kind of collective action.

The study's authors called on state and federal agencies to prioritize resources and technical assistance toward the highest-risk, lowest-capacity communities before the 2026 fire season reaches its peak.