Western wildfires strain federal budget
Wildfires burning in Oregon, Idaho and Montana are taxing national firefighting resources and helping to push spending past $1 billion for the year.
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise upped the national wildfire preparedness level Tuesday to the highest level for the first time in five years.
The center lists two central Idaho wildfires as the country’s top priorities, helping provide crews and resources for the Beaver Creek fire, which forced the evacuation of 1,250 homes in the resort area of Ketchum and Sun Valley and has cost nearly $12 million so far.
President Barack Obama was briefed Tuesday on the wildfires by his homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco. The White House said the administration’s focus is on supporting state and local first responders and that Obama’s team is in ongoing contact with federal and local partners.
More than 40 uncontained, active and large wildfires dot the U.S. map from Arizona to Washington state and Alaska, the White House said. About 17,800 people have been dispatched to the fires.
Steve Gage, assistant director of operations for the fire center, said they can’t fill all the requests for crews and equipment from the 48 fires that remain uncontained around the country.
As fire season progresses, Gage said, the center moves crews around to where the greatest assets, such as houses, are threatened, and tries to have crews positioned to catch new fires when they are small.
The boost in priority for Idaho’s Beaver Creek fire gave fire managers resources they needed to start attacking the fire more directly, fire spokesman Rudy Evenson said. Weather conditions were also improving. The fire was 9 percent contained after burning 160 square miles and had 1,750 personnel on site. The cost through Monday was $11.6 million.
In Oregon, winds that draw windsurfers to the Columbia Gorge have doubled the size of a wildfire to 10 square miles. The Government Flat fire burned two homes and threatens 150 more on the northern flanks of Mount Hood. Four days into the battle, the cost has topped $1 million, Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Dave Morman said. About 50 homes have been evacuated in the area of canyons 10 miles southwest of The Dalles.
“That’s one of the challenges when the fire gets into these long canyons; it’s very, very difficult for firefighters,” he said.
Nationally, federal agencies have spent more than $1 billion so far this year, about half last year’s total of $1.9 billion, according to the fire center. There have been 33,000 fires that have burned 3.4 million acres.
Whether costs top the 10-year average of $1.4 billion or the $1.9 billion spent in 2012 and 2006 will depend on the rest of the wildfire season, which traditionally gets very active in Southern California as late as October, Gage said.
Professor Norman Christensen of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, an expert in the environmental impacts of forest fires, said fires have been particularly intense in Colorado, California and Idaho this year.
“Certainly drought in some areas has contributed to the number and intensity of fire events,” he said in an email. “But many of the fires have been in highly populated, wilderness-urban interface areas such as Colorado Springs; Sun Valley, Idaho; and the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. That adds greatly to costs since so many more resources are required to protect built structures.”
Despite firefighting efforts, 963 homes and 30 commercial buildings have burned this year, according to the fire center. And 30 firefighters have died in the effort, including 19 Hotshots at Yarnell, Ariz. The annual average is 17 dead over the past 10 years.