Urban Refugees Reorder Wildfire Priorities Fire Crews Spend More Time, Money Saving Houses Than Trees
As if wildfires aren’t already daunting enough, firefighters are burdened with a new phenomenon: urban Americans’ flight to live with nature.
State and federal land managers who addressed a logging conference Friday said defending houses built near timberlands is draining their budgets and risking firefighters’ lives.
The least the public can do is make their homes more defensible, said speakers at the 57th Intermountain Logging Conference.
Last summer’s lightning-ignited fires burned much of the Wenatchee and Payette national forests in central Washington and Idaho.
Resources already stretched thin were used to protect houses instead of saving millions of dollars of timber.
“It was a not a question of ordering more resources; there weren’t any,” said Dave Alexander, who supervises the Payette near McCall, Idaho.
Chelan County on the eastern slope of the Cascades was equally devastated.
The final tally was 186,000 acres scorched, 37 homes lost, 10,000 firefighters activated and $44 million spent on four separate blazes, said Andy Anderson of the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
The fires were so intense, some spread four miles in 90 minutes, charring everything in their paths.
Federal forester Elton Thomas said the Tyee Creek fire alone burned 140,000 acres between Entiat and Chelan.
The cost of the restoration effort on just national forest land already has reached $20 million, most of it spent to minimize inevitable flooding problems come the next major thunderstorm, Thomas said.
While the Tyee fire was too massive to fight directly, fire crews were forced to spend their days and nights protecting about 500 homes, Anderson said.
All five towns in Chelan County were threatened by the flames.
It’s not that homeowners are ignorant about fire dangers, Thomas said, but they seem willing to live with the threat.
“A reporter for CNN a few years ago asked a man whether the country’s problem was ignorance or apathy,” Thomas said. “He answered, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.”’ xxxx PROTECT YOUR HOME If you live near the woods, firefighters urge you to make your home defensible from wildfire: Replace cedar shake and wooden roofs with noncombustible material. Trim trees away from roof. Keep yard green and moist, and free of debris. Clean leaves and pine needles from gutters. Have an adequate water supply to help fight fire. Ensure emergency vehicles can reach your place easily.