Fire potential could be high for this summer

Fire officials normally don't care to talk or speculate in March about the coming forest fire season, but this year is different.

This winter's extremely dry conditions across most of Montana and Idaho have only sharpened concerns about this summer's fire potential, said Don Black, the assistant director for fire program planning at the Forest Service's regional office in Missoula.

"Normally we don't really see a fire season in this part of the world until mid-August … But this could be one of those years like 2003 where we start to see large fires as early as early July," said Black, a former fire management officer on the Flathead National Forest.

Black was on the Flathead in 2003 when multiple forest fires erupted in the Flathead's North and South Fork drainages, eventually burning more than 310,000 acres.

But that year was not as dry as 2001, when the Moose fire burned 73,000 acres in the North Fork.

As of the end of February this year, the Flathead River Basin's average snowpack is at a new record low, 2 inches lower than it was during 2001.

"We're fully expecting that not only could we see a busier-than-normal fire season but also an earlier-than-normal fire season," Black said. "And that's a bad combination."

What worsens that combination is the fact that much of the region is in the grip of a six-year drought. Meanwhile the Forest Service is adjusting its budgets to meet the Bush administration's expectations for reducing the federal deficit.

"We're sorting out our program capability for the region in 2005 and budgets are not good, relative to the base level [of firefighting resources] that we want to provide in a normal fire season," Black said. "Budgets are a problem this year, and the forests are dealing with us here in the regional office on that, and we're dealing with the national office in Washington."

Just this week there was a 15-acre fire on the Lolo National Forest just north of Superior. A forest fire in early March is highly unusual for Montana, so "we let the Washington office know about that," Black said.

"We're giving them all the anecdotal and empirical information just to let them know that things are not what they may seem to be out here."

Despite budget challenges, Black said he thinks Montana and Idaho will at some point become the "center of gravity" for firefighting resources. It's likely, he said, that equipment and crews will be prepositioned in areas with the highest fire danger.

"The only good news in all of this is all of the precipitation that's crossed the Southwest," Black said, referring to heavy rains that have swept over Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

That region is probably looking at a quiet fire season this year, Black said, and that should allow the Forest Service and other firefighting agencies to divert resources earlier than normal to the Northwest.