County, state and feds float ideas for living with wildfire

By Marcy Stamper

With two consecutive years of record-breaking wildfires and severely dry conditions throughout the West, local, state and federal officials are all calling for a new approach to address what Gov. Jay Inslee termed “the new phenomenon of megafires.”

Recommended policy changes call for everything from intensive fuels treatments near homes to stricter zoning laws to new ways to pay for fire prevention and firefighting.

“The stark reality is, our wildland fire environment is unlike anything we have ever faced,” Peter Goldmark, Washington’s commissioner of public lands, told the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this August in Seattle — while fires were still raging in Okanogan County and in states around the West. The committee is holding its next hearing on wildland fire management next week.

At the August hearing, organized by Sen. Maria Cantwell, representatives from state and county government and people who study fire talked about the urgent need to focus on prevention and preparedness — rather than just battle catastrophic fires.

The Okanogan County commissioners plan to review their own ideas for fire response and initial attack next week. As the starting point for their discussion, they will use a proposal for more local control over firefighting that was submitted to the state Legislature last year, according to Okanogan County Planning Director Perry Huston.

The commissioners are now exploring other approaches to cope with a future of more intense fires. Firefighting response — particularly initial attack — was better this year than last, said Okanogan County Commissioner Ray Campbell in an interview in October. But Campbell still wants to make it easier and faster to dispatch trained local forces.

Particularly when resources are deployed on urgent fires around the country, the county needs to be better prepared to handle its own situation, said Campbell. “We’ll be looking to see if we can get a local response going,” he said. One strategy he has been investigating is a public-private partnership that has been used in Idaho for initial attack.

The county would still rely on big, national teams, but Campbell said he wants to implement a system that would enable firefighters to attack a fire before those larger teams can be deployed.

Campbell said this area has historically had temperatures over 100 degrees and 40-mile-per-hour winds. He will be consulting with firefighters familiar with this regime. “These old firefighters from the leadership know how it was done years back,” he said.

Even Boy Scouts helped, said Campbell, who recalled his own early experience, when Scout leaders taught them the basics of using a Pulaski, a shovel and a hose to build fire lines — at a safe distance from a fire.

Help for firefighters?

Sen. Maria Cantwell has been working with a bipartisan group to reform federal fire policies.

Presenters at the Senate committee hearing talked about the need to end what is called “fire borrowing,” where the U.S. Forest Service ends up transferring money from other programs — including road and facilities maintenance — to fight catastrophic fires each year.

In the past 20 years, the amount of money spent fighting catastrophic fires has increased from 16 percent of the total Forest Service budget to 42 percent, according to a Forest Service study done last year. Meanwhile, all other programs have seen significant cuts.

The approach to firefighting has not kept up with climate change and other explosive risks, Michael Medler, a spokesperson for Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology, told the Senate committee. The Forest Service treats only 2 million acres a year, whereas 10 times that acreage needs attention, he said.

“Climate change is combining with years of fire suppression to create larger and hotter fires, and development has left thousands of communities vulnerable to fires that used to happen miles from anyone,” he said.

Medler said these conditions put firefighters at risk. “To make matters worse, our wildland firefighters are trained for the backcountry, but they are increasingly trying to protect communities from these hotter fires,” he said.

A commissioner from Kittitas County who participated in the Senate hearing recommended creating fire-adapted communities. That would include more-intensive fuels reductions to create defensible space near populated areas.

Thinning the last one-quarter mile around communities could make a real difference — and create year-round jobs, said Medler.

The speakers at the hearing urged local jurisdictions to use their wildfire protection plans in land-use planning. Communities need to incorporate building codes, road design and other best practices from their wildfire protection plans, said Cantwell.

Okanogan County’s wildfire protection plan was last updated in 2013 but has not been thoroughly incorporated into current planning and zoning.

Cantwell said they hope to pass legislation this year that incorporates lessons learned from recent fire seasons and scientific assessments of forest health.

Help for recovery?

Gov. Inslee wants the federal government to take more responsibility to help people recover after a wildfire.

Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) granted disaster aid to help local governments and utilities rebuild damaged roads and the power grid, the agency turned down Inslee’s request for individual assistance two years in a row.

“One immediate action that FEMA should pursue is a change in policy to allow communities impacted by wildfires to better access the agency’s individual assistance programs,” said Inslee last month, after FEMA denied the individual assistance to Washington counties — including Okanogan — affected by this summer’s wildfires.

“I believe that FEMA’s current standard does not adequately consider communities affected by wildfires — disasters which tend to impact large areas which can be sparsely populated,” he said.

State strategies

Efforts to address extreme fire risk are also occurring on the state level. Inslee has convened a Wildland Fire Council — set to hold its first meeting next week — to develop strategies to protect lives, livelihood, property and the environment.

Inslee outlined the following priorities for the council: to make recommendations about how to respond to megafires and to strengthen partnerships between local, state, federal and tribal governments for fire preparedness and response.

The council will include representatives from several state agencies. The council’s next meeting will be in Wenatchee and will include the public. No date has been set yet.

“We need to start to build a culture of living with fire — that’s the key,” Nick Goulette, who works to develop fire-adapted communities in northern California, told the Senate committee.

Campbell said he wants to get something in place soon. “I’m afraid of next year,” he said.