Firefighting expense totals $11.3 million
BOISE – Idaho lawmakers will have to come up with $11.3 million to pay for fire suppression costs, in a season that saw major fires in central and north-central Idaho.
“Fire suppression is expensive,” said Winston Wiggins, director of the state Department of Lands. “We knew it was dry.”
Soaking rains have almost certainly ended the fire season on Idaho’s state lands, Wiggins reported Tuesday to the state Land Board. The Coeur d’Alene mountains received up to 4 inches of rain in early October, and a quarter-inch fell in the Boise area.
“Unless we have an extended dry period, we should not have any more large, expensive fires,” state lands fire planner Don Wagner wrote in a written report to the board.
The firefighting costs for the 2005 season are the second-highest the state has had, surpassed only by the 2000 season’s $14 million. The Legislature pays the bills for firefighting costs with a supplemental appropriation from the current year’s budget, taking them up at the start of its legislative session in January.
Last year’s firefighting costs for the state were an unusually low $1.2 million, in part because late-August rains dampened forest lands just when the fire danger was at its highest.
In 2003, the state spent $8 million on fire suppression on state and private forest lands. In 2002 the figure was $3.6 million, and in 2001 it was $3.7 million.
Though this year’s fire costs were high, the 11,170 acres that burned fell far short of the 2000 figure of 98,600 acres.
“An awful lot of that has to do with where the fires are,” Wagner explained in a telephone interview from his Coeur d’Alene office. “If they’re out in the hinterlands in the grass, you can burn a lot of acres cheap. If they’re near houses and in the trees, it can be very expensive.”
That’s what happened this year. The 5,000-acre Blackerby fire near Grangeville threatened 40 structures, including 20 homes. That major fire, which started Aug. 9, burned at the same time as the 4,731-acre Long-Ruggles fire in the steep, forested Salmon River breaks, which broke out Aug. 8 – stretching firefighting resources.
State crews fought two major fires in the Panhandle, one that burned 108 acres just north of Bonners Ferry in July and threatened four homes, and the Deep Creek fire that burned 25 acres six miles south of Bonners Ferry on July 31.
Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who chairs the Land Board, praised state fire crews, and said when he visited fire lines and camps he was impressed. “I just continually marvel at these folks that fight these fires,” he said. They’re young, skilled, and taking on a tough job, he said. “Many of them are just acquiring good funds to then continue their education. So they deserve our thanks.”
The governor added that the crews also deserve funding for all the equipment and supplies they need.
Wiggins said it’s difficult to predict firefighting costs, but people who study tree-rings and the like have told him dry years are likely to continue. “We’re leaving a relatively wet period” that stretched from the 1950s through the 1980s, he said. “What we’re returning to now is probably much closer to normal.”