Burns inevitable, fire experts say

The Inland Northwest might be a comfortable distance from the recent Gulf Coast hurricane disaster, but some wildfire experts from the region got a bit nervous watching the televised scenes of chaos.

The forests here have a long history of big burns. When the next one happens, evacuating the many new residents from rural subdivisions and protecting their high-dollar dwellings could be nearly impossible for firefighters, according to experts who met this week at the Inland Northwest Wildland Urban Interface conference in Worley, Idaho.

“It would be a Northwest version of what happened in Texas,” said University of Idaho Extension forestry educator Chris Schnepf, referring to the images of gridlocked highways when Hurricane Rita recently threatened Houston.

Many North Idaho counties have already developed wildfire disaster response plans. Local governments in Washington are working on similar plans. But Schnepf and others at the conference wonder if the plans will handle the rapid pace of growth in the region.

“The development pressure here in North Idaho is just off the charts,” Schnepf said.

The same dramatic, remote home settings prized by many newcomers will also be the most difficult to defend during a fire, said Pat Durland, a wildland fire consultant from Boise.

In the face of so much growth, Durland said government planners might want to take a hard look at a radically different approach taken in Australia to protect homes from fire. There, able-bodied homeowners with the right training and equipment stay at their houses and defend them from approaching wildfire, Durland said. The model came about after a fire in 1983 killed 75 people, including many who tried too late to evacuate.

As long as about 150 feet around a home is cleared of brush and fuels, the homeowners can protect their dwellings by extinguishing any embers that land on wooden decks or roofs, Durland said. San Diego County already has five communities designed in a manner to prevent the need for widespread evacuation, but Durland said many Americans cling to old beliefs.

“We have a traditional fire service mentality of, ‘We will save you,’ ” he said. That works when only a handful of homes are threatened. But when burning embers and flames threaten entire subdivisions – such as what happened in Spokane’s 1991 fire storm or even this summer’s School Fire near Pomeroy, Wash. – firefighting agencies simply don’t have the equipment or manpower to protect each home.

“We’ll always have the big fires,” Durland said. “They’re inevitable. But what we’re telling people is we don’t have to lose homes.”

The stakes are only getting bigger. Washington State University sociologist Annabel Kirschner told conference attendees to expect even more demand for rural properties in fire-prone areas, especially from retiring baby boomers. The Northwest is expected to be a top draw for these retirees, she said, citing a variety of government reports. Because they are no longer working, the retirees don’t have to worry about commute time, but they might not have the strength to keep up with brush removal or other necessary fire prevention tasks in isolated areas.

“If you think you have a lot of retirees now, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Kirschner said.

Kootenai County Planning Director Rand Wichman said the county’s new subdivision ordinance has a provision aimed at minimizing wildfire risk in timbered subdivisions, but he doubts the ordinance goes far enough to reduce the threat. When tougher provisions were proposed, they were “widely despised,” and scaled back, Wichman said.

“On a bad fire year we’re poised to lose a number of homes. I say that with no doubt in my mind,” he said. “It will take a significant problem before there is motivation to do something.”