Becoming Wildfire Smart – Part I

Maybe you made it to Dr. Paul Hessburg’s presentation “Living in the Era of Megafires,” a couple weeks ago in Central Washington University’s Science Building. The presentation and film – from The Wildfire Project – were presented by the Cascadia Hazards Institute. “Megafires” are those over 100,000 acres, and they are being widely seen as a growing threat to our way of life. Education is the answer, and Dr. Hessburg’s group is out to educate. I like their motto: “Through education, we firmly believe we can change the way we receive fire and smoke.”

If you missed that October meeting, the tour will move again through Oregon and Washington in March of 2017. (You will find details at www.north40productions.com/wildfire/.)

Wildfire has been on my mind lately. Some from the megafires talk. Part of it triggered as I talked with one of the folks still rebuilding from the 2012 Taylor Bridge Fire, which destroyed 61 homes and blackened three dozen square miles of our backyard. Another part of it, no doubt, is looking at this season and weather – time and conditions which might support prescribed fires, or controlled burns. Mostly, however, my mind lingers on what I saw up north.

A few weeks ago, a number of us took part in the Coordinated Resource Management Executive Tour – an annual meeting and field day in an area with a resource issue to which local folks and agency people seek solutions by working together (hence, “coordinated resource management”). This year, we headed north to Okanogan County and the area affected by the Carlton Complex Fire of 2014.

That fire began on July 14, 2014, as four separate lightning-caused fires. In a week it was one fire, burning over 390 square miles, destroying 322 houses and about 150 other structures in rural Okanogan County and at Pateros and Malott. One man died of a heart attack protecting his home. Fighting the Carlton Complex Fire cost the state an estimated $60 million (excluding property and infrastructure damage). With the help of a little rain, the fire was finally mostly contained by the end of July.

In August of 2015 came the Okanogan Complex Fires. Another blow to the people and government of the county – although not quite as devastating (partly, perhaps, because folks were more prepared after 2014).

As you might imagine, we saw and heard some pretty amazing stories. We talked with ranchers who lost rangeland and grass, and others who helped their fellows find supplies and grazing; we spent time with a rancher who lost most of his cattle herd – a herd he has selectively bred over decades. We talked with conservation district folks like Central grad Craig Nelson who helped pull together community and interagency teams to address the resource losses through both fires, and Department of Ecology agents whose nearly-impossible job was guiding the restoration of water and air resources. And we walked scorched ground with employees of the Washington Departments of Fish and Wildlife, and Natural Resources, looking at plant communities and wildlife habitat.

The consistent message – after “look at what folks can do when they pull together through such devastation” – was “these fires are not ‘one and done’ events; they are our future if we don’t start now to prepare our forests to better handle wildfire.”

The Firewise Programs of thinning community forests to protect at-risk communities and homes is a great program. And it is not addressing the millions of acres of overstocked and ripe-for-devastating-fire forest lands. Prescribed fire does address over-stocked forests; it just has to be used, and it must become socially acceptable to a culture still attached to Smokey Bear and his message of stopping all forest fires.

At the edges of those places in Okanogan County where prescribed fires (controlled burns) had been used to thin dense forest and undergrowth, the raging wildfires sizzled out. In those places where controlled burns had taken place, with their more natural lower-intensity flames and thinning, native vegetation was recovering quickly and normally. The trees which had lost lower limbs and understory were less likely to flare up like those in the overstocked forests feeding the Carlton Complex wildfires. We saw the same thing with the Yakima Wild Rose fire of 2012. It was part of the Yakima Complex Fire in the Rimrock area; it pretty quickly came under control in areas previously treated with prescribed fire.

On our Okanogan tour, we spent some time with very passionate proponents of prescribed fire. One of them was Dale Swedburg. Dale grew up here in Paradise and just retired from his position as Okanogan Land Manager for DFW on Monday – Halloween. Over his career, he became a student of fire and its value to the public lands he devoted his life to protecting: lands which literally evolved as fire-dependent ecosystems.

Let’s consider these fire-dependent ecosystems – and how various publics look at their care and future – next week.

Happy fall…