Principled Approach
Following a devastating fire in the Black Hills area of South Dakota, an editorial in the Lead Daily Call-Deadwood Pioneer Times read: “… Several weeks ago we ran an editorial on the apathy of everyone in dealing with the ‘Fire Dragon.’ Since then he has shown his devastating, uncontrollable power…. Reminding the public of fire danger has proved insufficient.… Black Hills cities have become careless. They have let our beautiful pines grow right back down to their yards and have built new houses up against them, not realizing that their grandeur could change them suddenly into destructive torches.… Let's profit by this disastrous lesson. Let's plan for the future to assure a future.”
This easily could have been a commentary on the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire — except that it appeared in the newspaper on Sept. 15, 1959. And while its conclusive sentence, “Let's plan for the future to assure a future,” could be a slogan for today's Firewise efforts to mitigate the risks of wildfires, the editorial demonstrates an age-old problem that is exacerbated by human reluctance to learn from the past and to plan ahead.
Firewise Communities/USA was initiated in 2002 as a recognition program for communities that successfully employ recommended Firewise principles that help them plan ahead in mitigating wildfires that pose a threat to living in the wildland-urban interface. A practical follow-up to a decade of outreach efforts and a multi-year Firewise Communities Workshop series, in its first year, Firewise Communities/USA recognized 12 communities. By 2003, that number had more than tripled to 41. And last year, reports program manager Judith Leraas-Cook, more than 90 communities in 26 states were participating.
The following offers an insight into the Firewise Communities/USA experience, as related by three fire departments recognized last year that each introduced the program's principles to help improve the fire safety of the communities where they serve.
The Grizzly Gulch Fire that swept into Lead, S.D., in June 2002 burned nearly 11,000 acres and did not let up for more than a week, forcing the evacuation of the community's entire population of approximately 5,000. The fire emphasized the catastrophic threat that wildfires have posed in the area since homesteaders arrived in the 1800s and, quite likely, before then.
“Lead has long been a place where fire is a part of life,” says Jerome Harvey, assistant fire chief and emergency management coordinator for the Lead Fire Department. “My great-grandfather was known to say that stand replacement fires were a way of life. And he would know, since he came to the hills in 1888 and then dealt with the fires of 1890, 1893, 1899, 1910, 1931 and 1947. Yet, even with what we know from the past, it seems that people are inclined to learn the hard way.”
Fortunately for the residents of Lead, Harvey is a persistent proponent of the “Keep South Dakota Green” movement that has been heralded in the state for at least 50 years. It has led him to promote the preventive practices recommended.
Harvey first introduced Firewise principles in the Lead community in 1999. Of his early efforts implementing Firewise practices, Harvey notes, “We needed to improve our fire prevention capabilities and to develop structures and an infrastructure that would make us better able to withstand wildland-urban interface fires and other disasters. Through Firewise, we're able to educate our population about the realities of wildfire and prepare them for any possible occurrence.”
When the Grizzly Gulch Fire hit, the three years of education and preparation proved beneficial, helping the community to better withstand the destructive blaze that claimed 20 homes outside the city limits.
“We definitely withstood the fire better and people could see it,” says Harvey. “That reinforced the Firewise principles and helped to demonstrate how critical it is to employ them as a way of life.”
Harvey and the Lead Fire Department were helped significantly by the example set by homeowner Terry Kullbom. A retired oral surgeon who dabbles in real estate and serves as a planning and zoning commissioner for Lawrence County, Kullbom has a home situated on four acres within the Lead city limits, at the 1,000-foot mark of a 6,200-foot elevation, with forest behind it.
“The lot is on a 45° slope and was a real fire hazard,” says Kullbom. “So, in conjunction with the fire department, the Bureau of Land Management, and several other agencies, I decided to log my property and get rid of fallen trees and canopy.”
Three-fourths of Kullbom's trees were logged off his lot and 70 slash piles were created. That winter, the Lead Fire Department burned the piles as part of the city's Firewise program.
The fire department then used Kullbom's property as a model for other homeowners. At least a dozen neighbors followed the example, fire-wising their properties as well. Kullbom notes that “the following year, Lead got a grant from the BLM to continue the efforts.”
Harvey also says that support from the BLM South Dakota field office and the Fuels Program at the Fort Meade Fuels Module provided both extensive guidance and critical funding, and additional technical support and funding was provided by the South Dakota division of Wildland Fire Suppression, the U.S. Forest Service and Barrick Gold Corp.
“The great support has made it possible to get the program running and keep it going,” Harvey says. “And, as a fire department, we've been able to employ Firewise planning products in the field to identify actual threats while making our community more resistive to wildfires that could put homes at risk.”
An unanticipated benefit of the program was its stimulation of economic development in the community. For example, the removal of excess trees led to profitable work for loggers.
Still, it is an uphill battle. Memories tend to be short, and Harvey says that he and others involved in promoting Firewise must continually remind people of the resulting benefits. “Firewise needs to be a way of life, and that's the message we continually reinforce.”
“It's an ongoing challenge to keep people interested and aware that there is a problem,” says Roger Sears, a fire marshal and division chief of the fire department in Pocatello, Idaho. “If there's a lot of rain and no fires, they tend to forget. Our greatest challenge is getting people to understand that while there are no fires, the problem doesn't go away and now is the time to prepare property, so when there is a fire it's not so devastating because nothing was done.”
The hills near Johnny Creek, the subdivision where Sears recently introduced Firewise, still bear the scars of a 1987 fire that began two miles north of it, marked by the scorched stubs of the many juniper trees that once grew on the mountainside. An improperly extinguished campfire caught the sagebrush, trees and tall, dry grass and spread quickly, lasting for two days. It took 14 agencies and more than 400 firefighters in constant battle with the well-fueled fire to control it. Johnny Creek's 500 residents were evacuated before dying winds allowed the firefighters to control the fire and then put it out.
Sears has wanted to promote the defensible space principles that are at the heart of Firewise since 1995. It wasn't until 2000, though, that he learned of a group called the Student Conservation Association that he could team with to begin promoting fire safety in the Johnny Creek area that he served.
“The initial response was apathetic,” he recalls. “People's attitudes were largely ‘I bought in this area specifically to have the trees surround me. I have insurance to take care of my losses and the fire department will protect me.’ That apathy only began to change following the disastrous fire seasons of 1998 and 1999 — and even then it was slowly.”
Even so, Sears has noticed a change since receiving his first grant in 2000 — $80,000 from the BLM — to help promote fire safety in the wildland-urban interface areas. In addition to purchasing a Scotty Fire Safety Trailer that he used to present fire prevention meetings with homeowners, Sears worked closely with various groups and agencies, including the Pocatello Fire Department, the SCA, BLM, Three Rivers Resource, Conservation & Development, and the U.S. Forest Service.
SCA's home assessments revealed a changing attitude — and greater willingness by homeowners to take part in fire prevention. The first fuels mitigation project followed, in 2001. It involved 10 homes located on either side of a very overgrown drainage. The various agencies helped homeowners decide which trees to cut and which to just limb up, and the Forest Service and BLM sent wildland fire crews to assist with the actual cutting and limbing. Members of the fire department helped haul cut trees and limbs to a central location where the City of Pocatello provided a chipper and hauled the chipped material for other uses. The overall project took just a week.
“To my surprise, as I drove through Johnny Creek the following spring, I noticed that many neighborhoods had seen the pilot project and then taken it upon themselves to limb up their own trees,” says Sears. “This happened without any involvement or encouragement from the fire department. And that was when I knew that the community was ready to embrace the Firewise Community recognition program.”
In 2002 and 2003, the work continued, despite a reduction in outside funding. In addition to the mitigation efforts, the department designated a Fire Education Team, composed mainly of high school students, that completed home surveys of all the homes in the Johnny Creek Subdivision and logged the information into a database that the fire department can use during fire incidents. They also performed more than 70 home evaluations for homeowners, which led to three fuels reduction projects in 2003 and two fuels reduction projects in 2004.
Education efforts also include providing the public with information about using non-combustible construction materials on their homes. To that end, Sears has found an ally in local media.
“The newspaper has covered each of our fuels reduction efforts and provided space for a weekly column, written by Gretl Class, who is coordinator of the Fire Education Team, and Richard Wolfe, who is a liaison officer with the Greater Interagency Fire Front,” says Sears.
“Even with all the progress we've made, we still face apathy at stages along the way.” For example, Sears realized the only obstacle to meeting the requirements for Firewise Communities/USA recognition was forming a homeowner committee and appointing a board. “While everyone thought the idea was great, no one wanted to take a leadership role.”
Fortunately, though, homeowner Pam Penny volunteered to chair the committee and a board was formed. Penny attended the Firewise Conference held in Denver this past November. “I learned a lot about fires and fire-prone areas and the protective measures that need to be taken. And I've seen the progress we've made from the fuels reduction efforts that have already been done. A lot of education still needs to be done and we're planning activities to keep our progress going.”
“Our community is a model wildland-urban interface,” says Ron Mengel, member of the Town Planning Council in Castle Valley, Utah. “The threat of wildfire is high, yet we have a small volunteer fire department that cannot hope to protect against a major wildfire.
“Firewise provides the awareness and methods for the homeowner to protect his property independent of the fire department. And when a critical mass of property owners is fire-wise, it frees firefighters to attack the fire, rather than diluting resources to defend poorly prepared properties.”
Mengel attended a Firewise workshop in Durango, Colo., along with Castle Valley Mayor Bruce Keeler after Castle Valley Fire Chief Floyd Stoughton noticed an item about the program in a publication. “Once we got back, we basically followed the Firewise model for change management, identifying and recruiting community leaders and ‘doers’ to lead the effort,” says Mengel, who teamed with Dave Vaughn, GIS administrator for the Castle Valley Fire Department in implementing Firewise in the community.
The effort included building relationships with area agencies, including the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, and the Utah Division of Forestry Fire and State Lands. Together, the team devised a comprehensive fire plan. They also used mapping software awarded by the national Firewise program and ESRI, the creator of ArcView.
“Mike Price [a GIS expert with the national Firewise program team] was instrumental in getting the ArcView and ArcMap software, which allowed us to gather and develop data for supporting our fire plan,” notes Vaughn. “Using the GIS technology to help my friends and neighbors and make an impact on decisions being made has been very gratifying. I've been using GIS for almost 16 years and this is the first time I can actually see something that really means something to me in my everyday life result from the technology.”
While the GIS software helped with data collection and planning, the Firewise team also organized spring clean-ups to promote fuels reduction in the community and provided educational materials to community members.
These efforts were helped, in part, by efforts already under way in conjunction with the Division of Forestry Fires and State Lands. “Our agency was already working with Castle Valley in identifying local communities at high risk for wildfire and what could be done to reduce that risk,” says Gary Cornell, Southeast Area Manager for the Division. “Firewise is a well-used resource and in becoming a Firewise community, Castle Valley got some great support in developing its programs and plans.”
And although, as in Lead and Pocatello, the Castle Valley team faced individuals who were resistant to change, community response was mostly positive, says Vaughn. “Just seeing the increased amount of community good will and willingness to work together has been very satisfying.”
Castle Valley homeowner Ron Drake, who also is a member of the Castle Valley Fire Department, helped to spread the good word through his weekly column in the Moab Times Independent. He says, “As homeowners, it was important to clear and thin the natural vegetation around our homes. We're situated on five-acre lots, most of which isn't cultivated. The sagebrush can grow pretty thick and lower limbs on trees needed trimming to prevent the ladder effect.”
In addition to helping themselves, the time community members put into the Firewise effort resulted in an investment in their greater community: The state fire marshal had them keep track of time they spent preparing their properties and vowed to match those hours by having state personnel clear areas that were publicly owned. As a result, some public lands that pose fire risk were cleared and the BLM installed Smokey the Bear Fire Risk signs in the valley.
And Mengel notes that community support continues to grow. “We have received over $50,000 in community in-kind dollars, beyond any support from outside agencies,” he says. “That is a great vote of acceptance. Programs like Firewise may provide the tools, but people take the abstract and make it reality. Our effort has been blessed with people who made the choice to make a positive difference.”
That positive difference was recognized not only by Firewise Communities/USA in 2004, but by former Gov. Olene Walker, who presented the fire district with a special proclamation commemorating its designation as a Firewise/USA community.
“The Firewise effort provides the community with awareness of the issues and personal responsibilities associated with living in a wildland-urban interface,” says Mengel. “Employing its tools helps us to reach the people we serve in a positive way and any time you can make a positive difference, I think the effort is worth the cost.”
Karen Gardner is a contributing writer to the Firewise Newsletter and Wildfire News & Notes. You can find out more about the Firewise Communities and the Firewise Communities/USA Recognition programs by visiting www.firewise.org.
