Dnr Seeks To Beef Up To Fight Tougher Wildfires Money Requested To Study Ways Of Improving Firefighting Tactics
The agency charged with protecting Washington’s forests says fires are more common and tougher to fight than they were a few years back.
In response, the Department of Natural Resources is asking the Legislature for $150,000 to study ways of improving firefighting tactics.
“There’s no reason to suggest we’re at a crisis point at this stage. We went through 1994, which was a huge fire year, and we dealt with it adequately,” said Randy Acker, DNR resources protection manager.
“But I feel pretty strongly that we don’t want to wait for a crisis before we deal with this.”
Acker’s crews fought an average of 867 fires a year from 1975 through 1984. The number rose to 1,145 a year over the next decade.
Drought, lightning and careless people were responsible for many of the fires, Acker said.
“It’s difficult at this point to really point to any single item and say, this is what has been the problem,” he said.
Not only are forest fires more common, they’re also more complicated. Although trees are the agency’s primary responsibility, firefighters must also worry about the growing number of houses built in the forest.
“When you have structures in the woods, it certainly changes the firefighting dynamics,” Acker said. “We’re not trained to fight house fires.”
On Oct. 16, 1991, fires in the Spokane area destroyed 112 houses built in what firefighters call “urban-forest interface areas.” Hardest hit were suburban neighborhoods carved into pine forests.
Most of these neighborhoods have materialized since the early 1980s and are filled with people who used to live in cities.
Many of those residents don’t understand that rural firefighters can’t respond as quickly, and don’t have as many resources, as urban firefighters, said Acker.
Most of the houses lost in 1991 were protected by fire districts - some with volunteer firefighters. The DNR worked to stop the fire in the woods that day, and also helped protect some homes.
While fires are growing in number and severity, the agency’s budget is shrinking.
DNR had the equivalent of 284 full-time firefighting positions in 1980 compared to 216 this year. The number of firefighters is actually much higher than those numbers suggest, since most work only in the summer.
Still, “most of our engines now have two firefighters rather than three,” said Acker. “We still have the engines out there, but unfortunately, when they arrive at a fire, they’re not as effective.”
, DataTimes