by Michael Howell
Work on establishing a boundary for the county’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) to be used in forming the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) has been in the works for a long time. Starting with a definition and guidelines associated with the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), a Core Team advising the Board of County Commissioners expanded on the border line recommended by HFRA guidelines which was about a quarter mile from structures and infrastructure, to include almost the entire managed area of the forest on the west side of the valley up to the wilderness boundary. They did this using the Forest Service criteria of Hazardous Fire Fuels. They set the boundary on the east side of the valley using an elevation line that they believe roughly corresponded to a criteria based on “vegetation.” This placed pretty much the entire county (outside designated wilderness to the west and high mountain forest on the east) within the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI).
Following a court case in Carbon County in which the court ruled against a CWPP that pretty much blanketed that county, the Core Team pulled back the WUI boundary on the Bitterroot National Forest on the west side to about a mile from the private land along the forest border (not quite the HFRA recommendation but close) and made the vegetative designation on the east side a hard line based on elevation to make the map “repeatable.”
This was the map and the document that the Core Team found acceptable, and that the public commented upon. But at a meeting on December 18, BNF District Ranger Steve Brown presented some new information that inspired the County Commissioners to reconsider the draft WUI. The map depicts a modeled projection of fire risks to structures, infrastructure and habitat by fires on the forest that might not be extinguished on initial attack. It shows graduated areas of fire risk in percentages of the chance of ignition due to the spreading of the fire under various weather conditions. The commissioners agreed that the draft WUI border should be enlarged to conform to the area of 50% or greater chance of ignition on the new map. They are now considering incorporation of this new boundary map and an accompanying narrative change into the draft plan.
A member of the Core Team who was present at the meeting succeeded in getting the commissioners to give the Core Team a chance to review this proposal before putting it out for public review. His reason being that it is an “unprecedented” use of modeling in the process and is not based on HFRA guidance and criteria.
I believe this is a legitimate concern. The HFRA guidelines are based on criteria aimed at reducing potential damage to structures and infrastructure that were developed based on extensive research and intensive research on actual wildfire behavior which emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of protecting the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ) and recognizes the relative ineffectiveness of fuels reduction more than a quarter mile into the forest from existing structures. In fact, the research shows that removal of trees and understory in the forest can actually increase the chances of fire reaching those structures.
This data is based on extensive analysis of actual wildfires around the state and the nation and includes an intensive analysis of the Roaring Lion Fire here in the Bitterroot combined with laboratory studies conducted by the Fire Lab in Missoula. All this data based on actual fires indicates that the HFRA guidelines extending a quarter mile into the forest are an effective and efficient way to protect structures and infrastructure.
The fire modeling recently submitted by the Forest Service, on the other hand, is not based on actual data. It is based on hypothetical conditions running the gamut from wind events blowing away from any structures (I presume) to the most extreme wind events driving them into structures. Doesn’t that mean that the predictions are based on unknown weather conditions that may not ever occur at any given spot?
Most importantly perhaps, it begins with the assumption that these fires have already escaped initial attack. This means that we are already considering fires that have a very low percentage chance of ever occurring. Very few of all the fires on the forest escape initial attack. If we consider the percentage chance of a fire actually escaping initial attack, it puts the 50% to 60% chance of it running off under some extreme conditions to ignite a structure in a different light.
I think it makes more sense to base the WUI on data collected from actual fires, even one of the most destructive local fires in our history, rather than to base it on a failure of effective response combined with a bunch of hypothetical weather events that may never happen at most of the points of projection. That is a WUI based on the study of real fires and real consequences rather than one based on hypothetical weather forecasts and their effects upon fires that have little chance of escaping to begin with.
We are not ever going to fire-proof the Bitterroot Valley. But we can implement the best protection possible which the science shows unequivocally to be cleaning up the Home Ignition Zone. The best approach might be a plan that includes the County Commissioners actually enacting a Fire Prevention Zone along the border of the National Forest in which all new construction is required to follow the guidelines for fire prevention within the Home Ignition Zone.
hsabin says
Tim – Yeah, Mother Nature does have a way of making fools of all of us. If wind come up – no amount of planning/maps/great ideas, etc is going to do any of us any good. The wind will take the fire and the firebrands that comes from it, anywhere it wants to go. BUT…if homes try to clean up and clean away the fuel that fires need might stop or help alleviate fire damage to their homes. MIGHT is the key word….But leaving your home or properties surrounded by fuel in a fire danger zone will certainly guarantee that your insurance costs next year will be up in price.
helen sabin says
How about then, YOU writing up your thoughts and putting it on a map to show all of us who would like to see the plan explained. Contact the commissioners and ask them to have a gathering at the fairgrounds and explain what they think is good. Paying attention to where the homes are built is important but even more so, is from where is the water coming? From where are the doctors and nurses coming for people moving in? And how about the sheriff and police – dodo they have the money to fund more personnel? staff the offices and buy equipment the officers need to do their job? have they talked to school superintendents? Boards of education? Florence just laid off 9 NINE!! teachers from that small school district. consider if a new subdivision is granted in that area, from where will the teachers come? Schools now can’t afford what they have. But it is p to the community to speak up, question as above and check what logging is going on and how does that affect our costs/. homes? etc.
Larry Campbell says
The fancy dancing by our County Commissioners we have seen around the development of a Community Wildfire Protection Plan has made it easy to see they are more interested in their log-er-all agenda than they are in protecting homes. They may profess to believe in science and care about residents’ homes, but that rings hollow to anybody that genuinely does and understands what the Commissioners are doing.. The Commissioners should stick with what they can do within their own jurisdiction and pay attention to where homes are built and the way they are built, yet they do virtually nothing in that regard. Limited funds should be focused on the HIZ. I hate to think of the price we might pay in the future for the Commissioners’ short-sighted, self-serving priorities. It would take a long time for forests to recover from the ineffective and very expensive logging far from homes that they are supporting..
Tim says
You are defiantly qualified as an “arm-chair Forest Ecologist and Fire Behavior Analyst”.
Study the fire history of the Bitterroot Valley. You might also consider that 4 of the top 5 watersheds in MT subject catastrophic wildfire are on the west side of The Valley..
No matter where the CWPP sets the WUI boundaries…Mother Nature always bats last. Take a look out your window and look at the fire scars.