OPINION: What we can do to prevent fires rather than fighting them

Dear Son: Sorry that I missed seeing you and your New Mexico Apache Kid Fire Use Module when you drove by Whitefish after you were released from your fire the other day. Thanks for the long days you put in and hard, hazardous work you guys do. It has been a long fire season for you and could be even longer if your crew gets dispatched back to California again. Stay focused. Your mom and I are proud of you, but we worry about you.

The severe drought, along with accumulated massive fuel buildups and extended hot, dry weather in conjunction with passing cold fronts this summer, turned into catastrophic burns in a lot of forested areas in the Northwest. We shouldn’t forget that a lot of people suffered the personal loss of their homes, their way of making a living for a while, the inconvenience of evacuation and the air was filled with unhealthy smoke for days on end.

 Son, you of all people know that fire that can be a good management tool if used right, but the ones I worked on and it sounds like the one that you worked on in California, burned with extreme intensity and severity in areas. There will always be wildfires as well as natural severe droughts and tree insect and disease cycles, but the key is to modify their fire behavior through fuels reduction near populated areas.

The reality is that people like living in forested areas. Fire managers have to struggle with this new complexity because there are now more urban interface homes, out buildings and infrastructure located throughout our forests in the West. We have to deal with protecting structures on almost every wildfire we get dispatched on now. We can’t let fires burn naturally out of control in these areas like Glacier National Park or the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Even they are limited in what areas they can let burn.

One of the reasons that I’m writing this letter to you is because I witnessed that we could have saved more homes this summer if the homeowners had done more to make their homes more defensible by reducing the fuels and flammables around their homes before the flame fronts approached. Fire managers would rather consult with homeowners before the flames arrive than try and console them after they have lost their homes like what we did at Kamiah, Idaho.

It was lucky that the same scenario didn’t play out at Essex. Homeowners should contact their local fire departments, Forest Service, DNRC or study the excellent online information sites like firewise.com or other websites recommended by your local fire people on how to reduce the fuels and flammables directly around their homes. Homeowners need to try to make their homes more defensible before the fire season begins. Firefighters don’t always have the time or the number of personnel to do this for you when the flame front is approaching your home.

As you well know, son, anyone who has spent much time on the fire line knows that wildfires are easier to control where tree crown thinning projects with scheduled under burning or periodic ground fuels reduction in the forested areas surrounding populated areas have been completed prior to an approaching flame front. They are better known as shaded fuel breaks in the fire world and there are good online pictures on Google and Yahoo of what they look like. They are usually done on federal, state lands or private lands and accomplished by tree spacing or by leaving a pre-determined stumpage of basal area per acre.

With them, there is less chance of running crown fires and long distance (up to a mile and half) spotting of hot fire embers starting new fires by depositing hot embers near homes ahead of the fire front and jumping our fire lines. They help keep the fire on the ground where it is more controllable.

These type of fuels reduction projects usually generate jobs and help pay for themselves with the wood products they produce, too. There are also grants available for private land owners to apply for to help pay for the cost of doing fuel reduction on their property. The available funding for them varies from year to year.

You don’t always agree with your dad, but in this case we agree to support Rep. Ryan Zinke’s and Sen. Steve Daines’ Resilient Federal Forest Act of 2016, which incorporates collaborative, responsible fuels reduction and an opportunity for the public and stakeholders to provide input for fuels reduction plans for their local area. It is the only proposed forest bill that I have read that tries to limit litigation, too.

As a former resource professional, I have seen what I thought were good, environmentally sound, fuels reduction projects get stonewalled in court for years by a few environmental groups. The system is still broken until these groups’ unnecessary lawsuits are limited and they are forced to sit down at the table as an equal partner with all the vested public interests in a collaborative effort where everyone is equally represented in a decision.

On the other hand, there are a lot of conservation groups and sportsmen groups that support Rep. Zinke’s bill. I hope that with enough support and good collaboration from everybody, that Rep. Zinke’s Resilient Federal Forest Act 2016 will help homeowners make their homes and forests more defensible from wildfires.

 A better informed public should agree that pro-active, responsible fuels reduction programs with periodic controlled under burns or ground fuels manipulation of fuels by home owners are a more realistic, more controllable, long-term solution than blaming the wildfires on climate change or spending $1.2 billion on fire suppression like we did this summer and then doing nothing.

Son… I know that you care about what you do, just like I do. I still serve as a fire safety officer on a National Incident Management Fire Team because I want to try and make sure that everyone’s son or daughter makes it home safely. You are our most important resource. I’m relieved that you didn’t get injured or killed by a falling bug-killed tree, falling snag in an old burn, vehicle accident or a fire entrapment this summer. We hope to see you later this fall.

Love, Dad

Scott Bates, of Whitefish, retired from the U.S. Forest Service as a silviculturalist/forester. His son Brett is a graduate of Whitefish High School and worked on the Grayback Fire Crew out of Missoula before transferring to the Apache Kid Fire Module. The author notes that the opinions expressed in the letter come from his own fire experience and don't necessarily represent the views of the National Incident Management Team the author serves on.