After Oregon’s record-breaking fire season in 2020, lawmakers wanted to map out which properties were most at risk. But anger from homeowners escalated quickly.

By Rob Davis for ProPublica

This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact.

A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk for every property in the state. It’s the kind of rating now available on real estate sites like Zillow. The state wants to use the results to decide where it will apply forthcoming codes for fire-resistant construction and protections around homes.

Around the same time, insurance companies start dropping Oregon homeowners’ policies and raising premiums to limit future losses, much as they have done in other disaster

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