Vulnerable residences burn up firefighting budget

Sun., Aug. 26, 2007

Heath Druzin McClatchy

1,000 homes evacuated near Ketchum

BOISE – A mandatory evacuation was ordered Saturday for residents of more than 1,000 homes south of Ketchum, where a massive wildfire raged and high winds grounded firefighting air tankers.

After three days of relative calm, the 39-square-mile fire was 38 percent contained, but embers blew ahead of the blaze and increased the threat of spot fires, spokesman Bob Beanblossom said.

"At this point in the mandatory evacuation, we're giving people the opportunity to get out during the daylight and to keep the highways clear for emergency response vehicles," said Kim Rogers, public information officer with the city of Ketchum.

A hundred other homes remained under a mandatory evacuation order from last weekend, including some worth millions of dollars in the resort area. A shelter was set up at a former high school in Hailey, said Dick Rush, CEO of the American Red Cross for Idaho.

No structures had been reported lost to the lightning-sparked blaze, although winds were gusting to 25 mph, Beanblossom said.

– Associated Press

BOISE – Idaho is taking a large chunk of this year’s national firefighting budget, and wildfire managers say some of the communities they are defending have done little to protect themselves.

The federal government has spent an estimated $125 million to fight large wildfires in Idaho this summer, 12.5 percent of the $1 billion spent so far nationwide, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Fire managers say much of that money goes to equipment and firefighters who increasingly find themselves hosing down homes ahead of flames rather than battling wildfires head on.

“The bottom line is you’ve turned these firefighters, these highly trained and experienced firefighters … into a very expensive maintenance crew,” said Jim Smalley, manager of Firewise, a national program that educates homeowners on how to protect their property from wildfires.

Most homeowners in Idaho’s fire-prone communities have not taken steps such as clearing trees and brush around their homes to protect their property, said David Olson, a spokesman with the Boise National Forest who has more than 30 years experience in wildland firefighting.

“Some of the challenges with some of the communities and individual homeowners is really feeling comfortable cutting trees down and making changes around their homes,” he said.

“Point protection” has been the jargon term of this fire season in Idaho. It means defending specific areas where structures are – often at the expense of fire suppression – and this year, protecting homes rather than putting out flames often has been the focus for fire crews in the state.

Most fire managers agree this job is made exponentially easier when homeowners “firewise” their homes, meaning clearing brush away from their homes, trimming branches and sometimes removing trees near their house to reduce the amount of fuel that can bring flames from the ground to their homes.

The most expensive fire in Idaho so far this season is the Cascade fire complex, which has cost $32 million, and point protection has been the focus for fire crews there who long ago gave up hopes of extinguishing the blaze.

The fire is burning east of Cascade and threatening the tiny forest hamlet of Yellow Pine, a town perpetually on the edge of one wildfire or another.

Many homeowners there have left brush and branches dangerously close to their homes, and protecting the town has taken valuable firefighters away from the fire lines, Cascade Complex spokesman Vince Mazzier said.

“There hasn’t been a whole lot of clearing around the houses,” he said. “A whole lot more could be done.”

On Friday, Steve Holloway, who owns Yellow Pine’s general store and Silver Dollar Grill, said the town secured a grant three years ago to make its buildings less vulnerable to fire but that not everyone in town took advantage of it.

“It’s real important, and I think this year it hit home that we need to do even more,” Holloway said.

There are still weeks to go in the fire season, but it’s likely Idaho will end up in the top three states, as far as dollars spent to fight fires, with only California and Montana outpacing it, National Interagency Fire Center spokesman Ken Frederick said.

Fires have blackened about 1.8 million acres and destroyed 22 houses across the state. Last year, only three homes were lost, and there are still hundreds of homes threatened in Idaho.

“People have a legitimate expectation that they be protected from fire,” Frederick said. “This change in mission means we have a different set of demands for firefighters.”