Wildfire Teaches Residents Valuable Lesson

The stucco was still drying on Genna Swan Porter’s new house outside Tonasket, Wash., when the Rocky Hull fire swept through.

Sparked July 22 by lightning, the fire burned nearly 10,000 acres and destroyed 37 homes.

Porter lost everything - possessions, outbuildings, two cabins - except the half-finished house. The stucco, a metal roof and the fact that the house was in the middle of a construction site cleared of brush saved the place.

“Everything else was ash,” said Swan Porter, an herbalist who lives on 40 acres with no electricity. As she watches her land recover, the 50-year-old said she learned some valuable lessons during the fire.

Fire swept through the area in 1985, so this summer’s disaster shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Swan Porter said.

But it did.

“I never believed it could happen to me,” she said. “I evacuated within an hour of the fire coming through and I still had no sense it was really going to happen. I was gathering shovels and filling water containers for a last stand.”

Environmentalists and timber industry backers agree that people who live in or near forests need to take steps to protect themselves from fire - before it happens.

Fire policy should start on the local level, said Tim Coleman, executive director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group. Swan Porter sits on the group’s board.

“I live in the woods,” Coleman said. “These last few weeks I have been really reassessing things around here.”

A metal roof is replacing the cedar shakes that cover the top of the house. To create at least a fuels-free buffer, Coleman cut back the brush around the house, and took out the Douglas fir with branches hanging nearby.

Taking responsibility to keep a home safe is essential, said Frank Carroll, spokesman for Potlatch Corp.

Along with home protection, landowners should thin too-dense forests around their homes, said Carroll, a former firefighter.

“Nobody gets to sit this one out,” he said. “Everybody in the Western U.S. needs to go into their own back yards and start with their own house. This problem cannot be solved from the top down.”

There’s also no sure way to entirely “fire-proof” a house.

Given the right mix of lightning, forest and wind, a wildfire can be unstoppable.

“When it’s a wildfire, sometimes there’s nothing you can do,” Swan Porter said.

Experts advise the following ways to keep fire risk down at homes:

Remove all flammable material within 10 feet of the house - such as bushes or small trees - pine needles from roof and flammable materials collecting on decks or boardwalks;

Staple metal window screening over openings or gaps to keep out sparks;

Remove fire fuels near propane tanks, and move tanks at least 40 feet away from house if possible;

Prune lower limbs of trees.