Merkley, Wyden call for guardrails on sites allowing wildfire betting 20%
By Riley Ellis8%
8/4/2026, 4:52:33 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, Pessimism Bias, and Slippery Slope, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 37.4% saturation with 149 hits. Analysis detected 964 faulty-reasoning hits from 398 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.4% and a BS Rank of 20% (22,503 of 28,060 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 80.20% of the article peer group.
Several U.S. senators raised concerns on Aug. 3 about fast-growing trading markets that allow users to gamble on disasters, such as Oregon's drought and wildfires.
Eight senators, including Sen.
Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, and Sen.
Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, addressed a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to place guardrails on the betting site as Oregon nears its wildfire acreage record.
"Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities’ suffering all so the rich and powerful can profit," the senators said.
"By offering contracts on fires, prediction market sites run the risk of encouraging people to influence fires that have already started, creating additional concerns around public safety and insider trading.”
Popular sites such as Novig, Kalshi and Polymarket operate under the CFTC's oversight and allow users to buy and sell shares of probability for different world events, including sports, politics and disasters.
Polymarket users can buy YES or NO shares that fluctuate as more people bet on one or the other.
If the event occurs, each YES share settles for $1.
Polymarket claims the platform is distinct from gambling, saying users are not betting against house odds but other people's predictions.
A market with a total volume of $17,300 was open on Aug. 4 for users to bet on whether Oregon will reach exceptional drought status by Aug.
30.
One user had made over $2,000 on that market.
Another market opened in 2025 with a volume of $260,000 predicting how many acres the Palisades Fire would burn in Los Angeles.
"There’s also the heightened risk—according to state and local fire officials—that individuals could be tempted to commit arson in order to make sure their bets are successful," the senators said.
"The prediction market Wyldfyre was created to bet on the behaviors and outcomes of California fires.
The site bears the slogan: "You can't predict wildfire.
But you can bet on it."
Merkley has encouraged parameters for these sites in the past, including a letter urging CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam to implement a proposed rule to ban election betting.
"The CFTC must lead the charge to rein in these contracts in the U.S. and offshore and put in place common-sense guardrails to prevent people from profiting as wildfires threaten communities," senators said.
Riley Ellis is an outdoor intern at the Statesman Journal.
He can be reached at rellis@statesmanjournal.com.
Speakers
4speakers23%attributed speech305writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coveragePolymarket
20 attributed words22% of attributed speech73% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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