Posted on 03/29/2004 7:27:05 PM PST by writer33
Some worry new focus on forest thinning will leave rural communities vulnerable
Bill Wilburn gets a knot in his gut whenever he drives through Denison and Chattaroy, two bedroom communities just north of Spokane.
The area is thick with new houses and even thicker with lodgepole pine.
After being around fires for 40 years, Wilburn can't help but cringe.
"That's the biggest, scariest piece of ground we've got in Spokane County. It could make Firestorm '91 look like a joke," said Wilburn, referring to the hot, windy day when 114 Spokane area homes burned and two people were killed.
Wilburn directs FireSafe Spokane, a nonprofit group that relies on federal grants to help homeowners reduce their fire risks. But the money seems to be drying up even as the Bush administration is proposing an unprecedented infusion of cash for wildfire-prevention efforts.
Much of the $760 million being requested to fund the Healthy Forest Restoration Initiative would be directed at public lands miles away from the communities most at risk, such as Denison and Chattaroy. Wilburn and other fire managers support the backcountry work but worry the money is being misdirected.
"If you don't do anything around the home, you're wasting your time in the forest," Wilburn said.
Unless homeowners do more to clear their property of brush and thick fuels, thinning the forests will do little to prevent wildfire losses, fire experts say.
"They've got it backwards," said Mike Petersen, with the Lands Council, a Spokane-based environmental group. "In my mind, they should start at the center of a community, then work your way out into the forest."
FireSafe Spokane recently received a $180,000 grant to help clear brush and develop fire-prevention plans for about 165 homes in the Denison-Chattaroy area this summer.
News of the funding was cause for optimism, but it was a small consolation in a year when more than a dozen other wildfire-prevention grant requests for were rejected, said Steve Harris, fire prevention coordinator for the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
"We've been fighting tooth and nail for more, but we've actually seen a significant decrease in funding," Harris said.
Until recently, the Lands Council had a grant administered by the DNR to go door-to-door writing fire prevention prescriptions for individual homeowners in northeast Washington.
The money paid for a private contractor to cut brush, branches and young trees within about 200 feet of a home. The homeowners signed a promise to keep the areas clear in subsequent years.
The federal government spent $1.6 billion fighting wildfires in 2002, according to the most recent data from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
This year, not a cent has been available for the fire prevention efforts of the Lands Council, Peterson said.
When homes are destroyed by forest fires, most of the time they weren't set ablaze by an advancing wall of flame, said Jack Cohen, a fire physicist at the U.S. Forest Service Fire Sciences Lab in Missoula. The culprits are typically small embers floating through the air, often from fires up to two miles away, he said during an interview last month at his office.
Cohen traveled to Southern California last year during one of the biggest fire disasters in a century. About 3,600 homes burned, which is more than three times the average annual loss for the United States.
Cohen stood watching the California fires from a distance while homes behind his back went up in flames because of the flying sparks and embers, known as firebrands.
During intense fires, the firebrands fly through the air like a blizzard, piling up on roofs and wooden decks like piles of red-hot snow.
The most effective way of making communities safe from wildfire is to focus on the 200 feet surrounding each home and on the actual materials used to construct the home, Cohen said.
Wood-shingle roofs are the biggest danger. "It totally overwhelms everything else," Cohen said. Next on the list are wooden decks. Metal flashing between the deck and the home's exterior wall can help reduce some of the risk. Many of Cohen's tips can be found on the Web site, www.firewise.org.
When threatened by wildfire, homes with composite shingle roofs and 30-foot fuels gap had a 90 percent survival rate, according to nearly two decades of research.
Cohen is careful to point out that he supports Forest Service efforts to return fire to the Western landscape _ he conducts prescribed burns on his own property outside Missoula. But if keeping communities safe from wildfire is the goal, the money should be focused close to homes, Cohen said.
For all the faults of the Healthy Forest Restoration Initiative, the legislation is an important step in the right direction, said Jack Ward Thomas, Forest Service Chief during the Clinton administration and professor at the University of Montana. Rangers are thrilled to finally have more tools and money to begin addressing some of the built-up fuels, he said during a recent visit to Spokane.
Until now, Congress has only been willing to fund firefighting, timber and road-building programs, Thomas said. Protecting homes can't be done without fixing the forest, he said. Thomas worries there is not enough money to do either.
"This program needs complete funding," he said.
In the Colville National Forest, about 200,000 acres of timber abuts homes and communities. Members of the Colville Community Forestry Coalition have been working with the state and federal government to identify areas most at risk for fire, said John Eminger, a coalition member and owner of 49 Degrees North ski resort near Chewelah.
"What we're doing right now is triage on the forest," Eminger said. Although the Healthy Forest Restoration Initiative is aimed at fixing public land, funds from the program will indirectly help lower the cost of thinning private property, Eminger said. More businesses will be started to do the forestry work,which will bring down costs.
"Only when the federal dollars start pouring in, will there be the ability for these guys to fire up businesses and get multiyear contracts," he said.
The first Healthy Forest dollars won't arrive until 2005, but Colville National Forest Supervisor Rick Brazell hopes to provide a taste of what's to come this summer. The Forest Service worked with the Colville Community Forestry
Coalition to propose two 5,000-acre fuels-thinning projects in the Orient and Burnt Valley areas.
The fuels thinning is expected to occur on the edge of the forest and will be used by the Forest Service to build trust with the public, Brazell said.
Brazell believes the Healthy Forest Initiative funding has a chance to finally give federal managers the tools to protect the scenery that has drawn so many people to the West.
At the same time, he understands the need for more resources for thinning projects closest to homes, he said. Reducing forest fuels and protecting homes is closely tied.
The connection became painfully clear during Brazell's most recent post with the Forest Service _ Colorado during the 2002 Hayman fire, which burned 133 homes and 137,000 acres.
A month after being evacuated, a van full of residents was driven back to their homes. Every home in the area had been burned, except for one. The dwelling had a metal roof and the homeowner had dutifully cleared all the brush and fuels away from his property.
The surrounding hillside was once thick with timber, but suddenly now was blackened like a World War I battlefield. In the middle, stood the man's home, now virtually worthless.
"He made the comment, `I wished my home would have burned too,"' Brazell said.
Notice the propoganda from the reporter. He just can't help himself.
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