Tag Archives: wildfires

The Robert Fire ten years later

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The Flathead Beacon has a nice retrospective on the 2003 fire season, the Robert Fire in particular . . .

The rolled-up maps in Dennis Divoky’s office show the enormity of the 2003 fires in Glacier National Park. Huge swaths of land are colored in red and orange, depicting in print the 136,000 acres of land burned that summer. It was the biggest fire season in the park’s history – even larger than 1910’s “Big Burn.”

“The 2003 season is the pinnacle,” said Divoky, fire ecologist for the park.

That summer, the National Park Service responded to 26 wildfires that scorched roughly 13 percent of the park’s land. Of those, six blazes were larger than 10,000 acres. The Robert Fire alone burned 57,570 acres of land in the park and Flathead National Forest and forced multiple evacuations of the Lake McDonald Valley and West Glacier. By September, the fires had cost the Park Service more than $68 million.

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Flathead Valley fire danger is now “high”

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The warm days continue and the fire danger rises . . .

Fire danger in the Flathead Valley is rising and is now considered “high,” according to fire managers.

The U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday the heightened fire danger on the Flathead National Forest and public lands in the valley, signaling an increased likelihood that fuels such as grass will ignite easily. Temperatures are forecasted to remain in the low 90s throughout the week and light fuels have dried out considerably in recent weeks, according to fire officials.

Although fire danger is elevated, no restrictions are currently planned for the Flathead Valley, according to Wade Muehlhof, a public information officer with the Forest Service. But that could change in the near future, he said.

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New Forest Service report on management of wildfire risk to homes

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The U.S. Forest Service released a new report on managing wildfire danger on the “wildland-urban” interface, a subject of special interest on the North Fork . . .

Earlier this year, U.S. Forest Service researchers found that roughly 90 percent of fuel reduction treatments on national forests were effective in reducing the intensity of wildfire while also allowing for better wildfire control.

The report, “Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and Preparing for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface,” synthesizes the latest research and provides examples of what communities in the wildland-urban interface can do to reduce their risk by becoming “fire adapted.”

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North Fork wildfire mitigation meeting July 10

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There’s a big informational presentation on fire mitigation coming up July 10, sponsored by the North Fork Landowners Association.

Larry Wilson turned over his monthly column to Molly Shepherd to announce the meeting and provide background . . .

On July 10, the North Fork Landowners Association will host the biggest educational/informative meeting of the year. From 9:30 a.m. to noon, there will be an educational program on wildfire.

When I asked Molly Shepherd, chairperson of the Fire Mitigation Committee, for information, she wrote an excellent report and it follows as she wrote it. Thanks Molly.

Ten years ago, on July 18, 2003, a lightning strike in the Whitefish Range ignited the Wedge Canyon Fire. Before the fire finally died out in the fall, it had destroyed seven homes and 29 outbuildings between Whale Creek and Trail Creek. A total of 54,400 acres burned. The costs of fighting the fire and protecting structures exceeded $50 million.

The Wedge Canyon Fire was only one of many large wildfires that have burned across the North Fork Valley. Indeed, fire has been second only to glaciation in shaping the valley’s landscape. But because of its cost, destructiveness and duration, Wedge Canyon served as a catalyst for change. The North Fork Landowners Association appointed a diverse committee to explore what might be done to mitigate the effects of future wildfires.

Members of the Fire Mitigation Committee reached several understandings based on the North Fork’s fire history and the probability of future fires. One was that it’s safer, cheaper and more effective to abate hazards before a fire starts. Another was that although landowners have neither the ability nor the desire to eliminate fire from the valley, we can and should ameliorate the risks that it poses to our homes and the costs associated with defending them.

Since the time of the Wedge Canyon Fire, the committee has obtained three grants from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to help North Fork landowners reduce hazardous fuels on their properties. Response to the voluntary cost-sharing program has been remarkable.

The first two grants resulted in more than 100 home wildfire inspections with treatment prescriptions. Fuels reduction work was completed under about 100 separate cost agreements. At least 500 acres of private property were treated with grant money. Probably even more acres were treated without any financial assistance. Projects funded by the third grant are underway, several of which seek to protect multiple homes and to afford safe ingress and egress for landowners and firefighters.

Private fuel treatments are just part of the story, however. Only about 14,500 acres — less than three per cent of the total acreage in the North Fork Valley — are in private hands. Given this reality, the Fire Mitigation Committee decided that landowners needed to collaborate with federal and state agencies to reduce risk.

The agencies were receptive. Our shared premise has been that public and private efforts should complement one another, with homes being the focal point. Both the Forest Service and the DNRC have planned and implemented major fuels reduction projects in consultation with the committee and other landowners. It’s been a model of public and private partnership, leveraging the effectiveness of one another’s efforts.

This month, the Fire Mitigation Committee will sponsor a workshop marking the 10th anniversary of the Wedge Canyon Fire. We’ll look back to conditions at the time of the fire, assess what’s changed in the intervening 10 years, and consider the potential effects of the changes on future fires. The event will serve as our annual Firewise Day.

Presenters will include Wally Bennett, who was one of the Type 1 incident commanders during the Wedge Fire. He’ll share his perspectives on the fire and on how subsequent fuels reduction projects might affect future fire behavior and suppression efforts.

In addition, committee member Allen Chrisman will examine North Fork fire history and climate change; Michael Dardis will discuss fuels projects undertaken by the Forest Service since the time of the Wedge Canyon Fire; Brian Manning will do the same on behalf of the DNRC; and Angela Mallon and Bill Swope will review what’s been accomplished with the help of grants and touch upon some ongoing concerns, among them ingress and egress.

The North Fork Firewise Day workshop will be held on Wednesday, July 10, from 9:30 a.m. to noon in Sondreson Community Hall. The Firewise morning will be followed in the afternoon by the semi-annual Interlocal Meeting, where county, state and federal agencies will report on their North Fork activities. We hope to see you then.

 

Western senators protest wildfire prevention cuts

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A group of senators representing states in the Western U.S. are not happy with cuts to wildfire prevention funds . . .

A bipartisan group of Western U.S. senators on Friday urged the Obama administration to focus more on preventing wildfires rather than taking money from programs that clear potentially hazardous dead trees and brush to fund efforts to fight the increasingly destructive blazes.

The administration is proposing a 31 percent cut in funding for the government’s central fire prevention program one year after record blazes burned 9.3 million acres. The federal government routinely spends so much money fighting wildfires that it uses money meant to be spent on clearing potential fuels like dead trees and underbrush in national forests.

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Work on national wildland fire strategy winding up

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Work on the “National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy” is in its final stages, with the public comment period starting December 15. This will likely have a significant impact on wildfire management and generate quite a bit of controversy. The Missolian has an excellent report, with links to supporting documents. . . .

Wildfires and weather share a common problem: We all talk about them, but what can we do about them?

The federal government hopes to answer the wildfire question with a three-year strategy session that’s wrapping up this month. But there’s no guarantee the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy will save an acre of forest. In fact, it might force the nation to decide how much it’s willing to let burn.

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Reference: “National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy” page at forestsandrangelands.gov.

Larger, hotter wildfires the new normal

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Expect more big wildfires for a while . . .

The trend toward larger, hotter wildfires in this part of the country is rapidly becoming the new normal.

In the four decades between 1960 and 1999, wildfires in the United States scorched more than 7 million acres in a single year just once. Since 2000? Eight times, with 2012 at 8.8 million acres and still climbing. The annual number of wildfires exceeding 25,000 acres in 11 Western states has quintupled since the 1970s, according to a Climate Central report released last month.

The causes, fire ecologists say, are simple enough. A century of fire suppression and traditional “pick-and-pluck” logging practices that removed the largest, most fire-resistant trees have transformed open stands of ponderosa pine into multi-tiered, lower-crowned forests of thinner-barked trees more susceptible to spruce budworm and bark beetle — and catastrophic wildfire.

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Crews fighting wildfire in Glacier Park’s Avalanche Lake area

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Glacier Park is dealing with a wildfire in the vicinity of Avalanche Lake . . .

Firefighters spent Sunday working to suppress the 25-acre Avalanche Wildland Fire burning on Mount Brown in Glacier National Park.

Reported to authorities Saturday afternoon, the wildfire is located near Avalanche Lake and the popular Avalanche Lake Trail will remain closed from the campground to the lake until further notice.No other trails have been closed because of the fire, park officials said.

Two U.S. Forest Service helicopters and a contract helicopter are being used to drop water on the fire and for aerial observation.

Twenty six firefighters and eight smoke jumpers also are working to suppress the fire. They are from Glacier National Park, Flathead National Forest and Kootenai National Forest.

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Safety issues kept Flathead Hotshots off fatal fire

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A Flathead-based fire fighting crew pulled themselves off the Steep Corner fire in Idaho due to safety issues the day before Anne Veseth was killed while working that fire . . .

One day before a 20-year-old firefighter was killed by a falling tree on the Steep Corner fire, a U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew from Montana refused to fight the fire because of safety concerns.

In a report filed Aug. 14 on the National Interagency Fire Center’s SAFENET website, an unnamed superintendent of the Flathead Hotshots said firefighting conditions on the fire, managed by the Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association, were “extremely unsafe” because of falling snags, lack of communication, lack of a command structure and mixed crews with no leadership. The report was written Aug. 11.

The next day Anne Veseth of Moscow, Idaho, a two-year wildland firefighter with the Forest Service, was killed when she was struck by a falling tree while working on the Steep Corner fire.

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Forest Service wants to snuff out all wildfires this year

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This story centers on Gila National Forest, but discusses a general, if temporary, policy this year: Whenever practical, the U.S. Forest Service is jumping on all fires as soon as they brew up. Why? Because it’s cheaper . . .

If lightning strikes in the New Mexico wilderness and starts a fire, the blaze would normally be little more than a blip on the radar of land managers who have earned a reputation for letting flames burn to keep forested lands from growing into a tangled mess.

This season is different. Now firefighters are trekking deep into the Gila National Forest with trains of equipment-carrying horses and one overriding goal: snuffing out all fires, no matter how small or remote.

The U.S. Forest Service’s decision is temporary. But after years of upholding fire’s natural ability to clean up the landscape, the agency’s about-face has drawn criticism from watchdog groups, some scientists and others who fear the agency might be setting the stage for an even more destructive season next year.

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