KWSO News Mon., Nov. 26, 2018

Members of the Cannabis Project Development team in Warm Springs have an event planned for Wednesday this week to update the community. On Wednesday at noon and 7pm, there are formal presentations scheduled, but folks can stop by anytime between noon and 7 to speak with the project team, get information, ask questions and give input.  They would like to hear from tribal members.

Governors have a wide range of priorities they want to tackle in the coming year, from tax reform to education. Yet it’s a topic that receives less attention on the campaign trail and in their speeches that could determine their success — natural disasters. In the last two years alone, storms and natural disasters have killed scores of people, damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes and cost tens of billions of dollars. Wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the South have been especially destructive, and scientists say climate change is making this more common. As the severity escalates, governors are finding they have to make disaster planning a priority or risk the consequences of inaction defining their terms and enraging voters. Handling disasters and emergencies was a prime topic last week when the National Governors Association held a three-day seminar in Colorado that most of the nation’s 19 governors-elect attended.

Bend and its surrounding communities carry the fourth-highest risk of being affected by wildfire in Oregon, according to a recent report commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bend Bulletin reports. The report evaluated 100 communities in Oregon and Washington that carry the highest risk of wildfire, based on a series of simulations that measure fire risk across the region. Warm Springs ranked fifth on the list of Oregon communities and Redmond came in seventh. Prineville, Terrebonne, Tumalo and Sisters also appeared in the top 25 Oregon cities at the greatest risk of fire damage. Merlin, an unincorporated community in Josephine County, topped the list of Oregon communities, followed by Redwood and Medford.