Sue Lani Madsen: It’s too darn hot to celebrate with fireworks this weekend

It’s too darn hot and dry for fireworks this summer. Firewise your property. And don’t be an idiot.

That’s not exactly what Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz has been saying in public briefings heading into the Independence Day holiday weekend, but let’s not waste time beating around a dry bush. Nearly 90% of wildfires this year have been human-caused, and we’re starting them at a rate well outpacing previous years. This is not a record we want to break.

Absent a lightning strike, forests and rangelands do not spontaneously combust. Sometimes there is a series of unfortunate events involving wind, trees and utility lines. But mostly it requires human carelessness with open flames, sparks, target shooting or fireworks. Or carelessly discarded smoking materials (whatever it is you’re smoking).

Use your All-American right to live in liberty and pursue happiness by choosing not to set anything on fire this weekend. It’s too darn hot.

And speaking of hot, when temperatures in Spokane broke the 1928 record of 108 degrees F this past week, the only surprise to Steve Busch of Spokane was how long the old record stood. “90 years ago Spokane had a much smaller population … the heat island effect of increased urbanization, parking lots, asphalt roads, and tens of thousands of homes and buildings running AC units and kicking out heat should be expected to bring us record temps,” wrote Busch in an email.

Heat island effect of urban density lies behind our “going to the lake” culture, starting with packed trains to Spokane’s “Inland Seashore” at Liberty Lake and spreading to lakes throughout North Idaho. Don’t be careless and leave a dangling safety chain on the boat trailer you’re hooking up for the first time this season for the annual Fourth of July regatta. DNR will track you down.

Cooling down urban heat islands has been a challenge for millennia. It’s not just about being more comfortable walking the dog, but reducing the need for rolling blackouts due to overheating substations. One strategy is adding more green – more trees, more shrubs, more grass. When former Spokane Mayor John Powers suggested adding a green roof on City Hall in 2002, the idea failed to thrive in a contentious mayor versus council environment. He was on the right track, but while green roofs can readily be incorporated into new buildings, retrofitting runs into issues of structural capacity.

And this is where the conversation circles back to fire. In what some have called a misguided plan for water conservation, the Spokane City Council has put forward a contentious proposal to encourage pulling out green lawns in favor of mulch. It’s a suggestion that works against both cooling the heat island and best practices for a firewise community.

All organic mulches are combustible and are not recommended within 5 feet of a home or a wood deck or ramp. Well-maintained lawn and irrigated planting beds, mulched or not, are appropriate. Noncombustible and inorganic mulches like decorative rocks and gravel are okay in the 5 foot zone, but unless dry leaves and pine needles are regularly removed they just add heat to the atmosphere and provide a place for windblown embers to lodge and ignite.

A May 2011 study by University of Nevada Cooperative Extension titled “The Combustibility Of Landscape Mulches” tested a variety of organic and synthetic mulches for flammability and flame height. The worst possible choices were pine needles, shredded red cedar bark and shredded recycled rubber. The rubber burned with flame heights over 3 feet and a heat output over 600 degrees. You might as well pour gasoline on the ground around your house.

Even the best choice, composted wood chips, will smolder and spread fire insidiously out of sight of homeowners or firefighters. If you do use mulch within 30 feet of your house, the report recommends separating “areas mulched with these materials with noncombustible and ignition–resistant materials such as concrete, gravel, rock and lawn.” Far from being a medieval relic as one local newspaper put it, a simple green lawn is the cheapest way to firewise your home and the community. A carefully designed, installed and maintained landscape is the new “ostentatious display of wealth.”

Like a wildfire, this column wandered and changed direction a couple of times while I waited for a formal statement to come back on email from Commissioner Franz. What she said diplomatically was this:

“As we approach the Fourth of July weekend, on the heels of a record-breaking heatwave, I am asking everyone to help keep our firefighters safe. Please avoid setting off fireworks and starting outdoor fires this weekend. All of us owe an unpayable debt to the firefighters who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe.”

In other words, don’t be an idiot. Be a good human.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com