FireSafe Flathead pushes plan-ahead strategy

During Western Montana’s dry, hot summers, wildfires become inevitable in the thickly forested mountains of Flathead County. But much of their impacts on the communities scattered throughout the region’s conifer forests is determined during the rest of the calendar year.

For nearly a year, a group of local residents, fire experts and county, state and federal officials has been meeting with the goal of encouraging proactive “fire-safe” practices for those living on the fringes of fire country.

Ali Ulwelling, a fire education specialist with the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, is one of the handful of fire professionals who helped get FireSafe Flathead off the ground last May. Over the past year, she said they’ve worked to connect private groups and individuals with the resources to develop “fire-safe communities.”

“When we talk about ‘communities’ we’re not just talking about structures; we’re talking about the mindsets of people that live in these communities,” she said. “A long-term goal for us, as a group, is to keep identifying projects, reaching out to communities and letting them know there are resources available to help.”

That includes grant funding to help cover the costs of fuel-reduction projects on individual properties, offering landowners free consultations with fire professionals and helping neighborhoods and communities develop fire-prevention plans of their own.

Like the natural flora and fauna that populate the landscapes around the Flathead Valley, communities also must learn to adapt to fire in a region of the country where periodic wildfires are one of the ecosystem’s defining characteristics, she said.

“We’re seeing more extreme, complex fires, longer wildfire seasons and lot of increased growth with people moving into the wildland-urban interface,” Ulwelling said. At the same time, she added, state and federal agencies are experiencing decreasing or stagnant budgets for wildfire management.

Some of those adaptations are straightforward, such as clearing brush from around houses and off of roofs or making sure a fire engine can safely maneuver up the driveway. But the group also encourages active management of forested properties to reduce fuels, weed out diseased or closely spaced trees and promote overall forest health.

Despite the plan-ahead outreach that he and other members of FireSafe Flathead have pushed, Lincoln Chute, the Flathead County fire area service manager, said they still have mixed success in bringing local communities on board.

“You just gotta try to find the spark plugs, and try to find those people and just keep moving ahead,” he said. “We won’t get everybody to do it.”

One of those “spark plugs” at last week’s FireSafe meeting was Rich Baginski, representing the homeowners association for Glacier Hills, a gated community south of Martin City.

Baginski said he moved from Ohio to the area in 2010 and began researching how to best care for his new home, a wooded property populated by conifers instead of the hardwood trees he was used to back East. He ended up talking to Rick Moore, a state forester whose job includes advising local residents looking to safeguard their land.

“That was probably our first exposure to how to take care of property both in terms of [forest] health as well as in terms of wildlife mitigation,” Baginski said.

Along with a small group of other neighbors, Baginski compiled a list of actions property owners could take to make the community more resilient to wildfires, and sent out invitations for residents to sign up for free assessments by Moore and Ulwelling.

“We were totally blown away by the amount of response we got, We had 92 percent of the property owners sign up for an assessment,” he said.

Last year Baginski said Glacier Hills was designated as a “Firewise Community,” one of 14 in the state. About half of those are located in the Flathead Valley and surrounding areas, he added.

“It’s been factual as opposed to emotional. We never tried to embarrass anybody, we never tried to make anybody feel guilty,” he said. Instead, his group helps to connect neighbors with experts and resource professionals. “That’s always been a focus of our team, doing those things that would otherwise be a barrier to help people get started. ... Our theme was always ‘what can we do to protect our investment?’”

Chute said he’s currently working on an update of the county’s wildfire protection plan, which will coordinate both county-wide and community-specific wildfire plans.

But he added that zooming in from that “10,000-foot view” requires working closely with local residents and connecting with neighborhood leaders like Baginski.

“Community involvement is huge,” Chute said. “It doesn’t work if it’s just a bunch of agency people.”

For more information about FireSafe Flathead or to get involved, contact Ulwelling at 406-751-2270.

To request a free property assessment or to get more information about cost-sharing opportunities and other resources, contact the Northwest Hazardous Fuels Program at 406-892-8155.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.