A Clear-Cut Way To Block Wildfires

It’s wildfire season again, and again residents of the Inland Northwest have begun to watch rural and suburban homes go up in smoke. Here in Spokane County we have learned from terrible experience how to prevent such disasters, but we have been slow to take the simple steps that determine whether homes will survive.

After the 1987 Hangman Hills fire and the 1991 firestorm, a committee of experts prepared a set of fire-prevention recommendations. Most have been implemented, and for that Spokane County commissioners deserve a salute.

But the most effective step still has not been taken.

It’s the creation of buffer zones. Think about it. When forests or fields burst into flame, what do firefighters do? With bulldozers, shovels and saws they create fire trails - strips of land cleared of anything likely to burn.

You don’t have to wait until a fire starts to create buffers capable of stopping it. And a fire line doesn’t have to be a strip of bulldozed dirt. It can be a well-watered lawn, landscaped with deciduous shrubs.

However, out on the metropolitan area’s growing fringe, people want big lots with plenty of trees to hide the neighbors from view. The trees tend to be highly flammable pines. The commuters who occupy big suburban lots often don’t have time, or tools, to clear the brush and thin the trees. In spring the underbrush grows, in summer it turns to straw, and all year long the pines drop carpets of fuel for disaster.

When fire sweeps the woods, the homes that burn usually are the ones whose owners liked the sound of branches brushing against the eaves.

Fire safety experts recommend at least a 30-foot clear zone around every home in fire country. The county ought to require such a buffer zone as a condition of issuing building permits and approving real estate subdivisions. So far it has failed to do so.

County officials have reasoned that the area’s options for brush disposal are so inadequate it wouldn’t be fair to mandate brush removal.

That’s absurd. Commercial chipping services can turn brush into mulch; hiring them ought to be seen as a cost of new construction, like hiring an electrician. Loggers these days pay good money for merchantable trees. The local solid waste disposal program accepts the first 260 pounds of small-diameter brush at no charge, and charges a reduced rate for larger quantities. And if that’s not enough, the public could insist that its clean-air police reconsider their open-burning bans. The pollution from sensibly regulated, off-season burning of small brush piles could be a smaller threat than all of the hazards, including pollution, from the region’s regular wildfires.

To require buffer zones as a condition of new construction would do nothing, obviously, for established homes. Only education, combined with adequate disposal options, will lead homeowners to protect themselves from the risks that go with a little house in the big woods.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board