Idaho’s state Land Board got a grim assessment of the ongoing fire season this morning, particularly as it affects lands within the state Department of Lands’ fire protection responsibilities – which include the raging Clearwater Complex fires in north-central Idaho. “We had over 150 fire starts in that area,” state Forester David Groeschl told the board. “Right now there’s about 25 percent containment. Friday was a very rough day last week for the citizens of Kamiah. We had winds in the neighborhood of 35 mph that blew the fire up, and we lost approximately 45 homes, primary structures, and 75 secondary structures. So the citizens of Kamiah were very impacted and continue to be impacted by this fire.”

“The team is making good progress on that fire,” Groeschl said, with more than 800 personnel working on it. “Resources are stretched thin nationally, we are at preparedness level 5. … There’s a lot of fire on the landscape now throughout the west. … Our greatest need right now is hand crews and engines. Aircraft when we can get aircraft as well, but I think we are doing OK there, and then some overhead positions. … So that complex fire continues to provide a lot of challenges and we will continue to try to get containment on that.”

Meanwhile, the Soda Fire in southwestern Idaho, which falls within the BLM’s fire protection responsibilities, is now 90 percent contained. “They’re making good progress on that,” Groeschl said.

In the past week, the state’s estimate of its firefighting costs for the season has jumped by $7 million to $10 million, Groeschl said, to roughly $25 million. It’s gone from four incidents on IDL protection that required incident management teams to 12. “We have a lot of fire season ahead of us, and those numbers will continue to change quickly,” he said. The current cost estimate for the Clearwater Complex fires is $7.5 million, but that’s likely to change.

For 2015, Groeschl said, “We are now at 119 percent of 20-year average for fire starts.” A week ago, 2,400 acres had burned on state protection; now it’s 89,000 acres. “That represents 800 percent of the 20-year average. When we look back at records, looking back at weather condition records and trying to find a year that is similar to this, we had to go back to 1926. … This is an unprecedented fire season that we’re seeing both in dryness, the lack of precipitation, we are seeing well above-average temperatures. .. We are seeing some unprecedented sort of conditions.”

Looking ahead, he said, “We have really no moisture in the forecast for the next 10 to 14 days. … We have a lot of fire season ahead of us. I am very proud of our team, IDL folks, our relationships interagency-wise with the Forest Service and BLM.” To date, he said, there have been no serious accidents or fatalities involving firefighters.

Fire restrictions are expanding across the state, and the logging industry is offering additional safety measures on timber cuts beyond current restrictions, Groeschl said, including stopping work earlier and extending patrols after operations end for the day. “We have had one request recently by one of the industry members to consider full shutdown of the forest. As we continue to have that discussion, we are not seeing right now that that is necessary, but we will continue to have that dialogue.”