FireSafe Flathead stresses fuel management

As fire season ticks closer, a group called FireSafe Flathead is hosting weekly discussions on the history and management of fires in Northwest Montana.

Thursday evening’s discussion at Flathead Valley Community College was entitled “Wildland Fire: Programs and Policies of the Flathead.” It brought together the area’s local, state, federal and corporate land managers to discuss forest management’s benefits and limits in taming wildfires.

Residents seeking to protect their homes should look to the plants nearby, explained Paul McKenzie, lands and resource manager for F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Company.

He said he often thinks of a concept called the “wildland fire triangle.” It “has three sides to it. You have fuel, you have topography, and you have weather. There’s not much I can do about the weather, there’s not much I can do about the topography, and so what we have left is the fuel, so I think that’s the greatest opportunity we have to try and modify the way fire behaves on our landscape.”

He and the other speakers repeatedly stressed that trimming trees and removing shrubs wouldn’t prevent fires. Nor would it keep them from sweeping through forests on especially hot, windy days.

But in many cases, when fire hits a wooded property, management can reduce the damage and give firefighters the upper hand, said Lincoln Chute, Fire Service Area Manager and Fire Warden for Flathead County.

Dense brush and small trees, he explained, often serve as “ladder fuels” that take fire into the treetops. Removing those can keep it on the ground.

“As the fire comes through [a managed forest], instead of nuking everything, you can keep it on the ground. When fire’s on the ground, the firefighters, we can do stuff with it.”

“If it’s in the treetops, I tell the firefighters working for me, ‘You better get back taking pictures like everybody else because you can’t do anything with it.’”

The speakers dwelled at length on the specifics of these planned thinning treatments, known as “shaded fuel breaks,” as well as other approaches such as prescribed burns. The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation employs service foresters around the state who can conduct a free assessment to determine what treatments would work best on a particular property.

These treatments don’t come cheap for a typical property owner, explained Bill Swope, Lead Forester for the Northwest Montana Hazardous Fuels Program. “It can cost six to eight thousand dollars.”

There’s grant funding, he continued, for Flathead County residents to offset up to 75 percent of these costs.

Residents interested in conducting fire management on their properties can arrange a free assessment by visiting the Forestry page of the Department’s website, http://dnrc.mt.gov/divisions/forestry/forestry-assistance, and clicking “Find your local service forester” on the right. Foresters can also provide application materials for a Northwest Montana Hazardous Fuels Program grant.

Reporter Patrick Reilly can be reached at preilly@dailyinterlake.com, or at 758-4407.