Free wildfire and land services in Deschutes County, Oregon

12 programs in 6 categories in Deschutes County. Every listing names its source; ring ahead before you rely on one.

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Deschutes is a high priority wildland urban interface county, the ground around Bend and Sisters especially. Deschutes Soil and Water Conservation District, in Bend, gives landowners technical assistance and a site visit at no cost. Where fire has physically damaged a property, the Deschutes County Tax Office in Bend is where an owner applies for the tax proration under ORS 308.425; the assessor is a separate office in the same building. OSU Extension's county office is at Redmond and delivers Tree School, the Basic Forestry Shortcourse and the extension fire programme.

This summary was drafted by a machine from the listings on this page, and an editor has not rewritten it yet.

BendRedmondLa PineCrooked River RanchSunriverPronghorn

hover the map to see townstowns marked where the Census puts themboundary from the US Census Bureau

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Why Sierra Log & Timber cares about your vacant land

Sierra Log & Timber mills cedar log and timber home packages in Chico, California. A good part of our working week is spent with people who have just bought land, and the same thing happens every time: the grants, the chipping days, the defensible space visits and the permit desks are all real, and all scattered across a dozen county websites that do not link to one another. So we put them in one place and left it open. You do not have to be building a log home to use this, and reading it signs you up for nothing.

Nothing local is recorded for Deschutes County yet. What is on this page reaches it from the Oregon and national listings above, which is worth knowing before you ring anybody: the help is real, but the desk answering is not in the county. We would rather say that than pad the page. If you know of something here that belongs on it, the second panel below is the fastest way to tell us.

Building on rural land in Deschutes County

What applies here, in Oregon and in this county, each line with the source it was read from.

Where the building permit comes from

Deschutes County Community Development issues building permits here.

Source · Deschutes County Community Development

Worth knowing here

Deschutes County is one of four Oregon jurisdictions that have adopted the ORSC Section R327 wildfire hazard mitigation standards locally.

Source · Oregon Building Codes Division

Building code

Oregon has adopted the 2023 Oregon Residential Specialty Code, built on the 2021 International Residential Code, and it has been mandatory for one- and two-family dwellings since April 1, 2024.

Source · Oregon Building Codes Division

Wildfire construction standard

Oregon's wildfire construction standard for new dwellings is Section R327 of the Oregon Residential Specialty Code, and it applies only in the four jurisdictions that have adopted it locally: Ashland, Deschutes County, Grants Pass and Sisters.

Source · Oregon Building Codes Division

Who issues the permit

The state's Local Building Department Directory names the department that issues a dwelling permit on unincorporated land in each county: the county's own building department in 28 of Oregon's 36 counties, a city department in five, and the state Building Codes Division in Sherman, Umatilla and Wheeler.

Source · Oregon Building Codes Division, Local Building Department Directory

Building it yourself

A person doing the work on property they own is exempt from Construction Contractors Board licensure under ORS 701.010(7), so an owner may build their own dwelling without a licensed contractor.

Source · Oregon Revised Statutes, chapter 701

Common questions

Does Sierra Log & Timber run any of these programmes?

No. Every organisation and programme on this page is run by somebody else: a county office, a state agency, a nonprofit, a utility or a tribe. We collect them, check them and publish them, and that is the whole of our part in it. What we do ourselves is mill cedar log and timber home packages in Chico, California.

Is this free to use, and does using it sign me up for anything?

The directory is free and reading it signs you up for nothing. The two panels below are the only places on this page that ask for an address, both are optional, and they do different jobs: one tells you when this county's listings change, the other tells us that something here is already wrong.