Commissioners adopt Community Wildfire Protection Plan

by Michael Howell

Last Tuesday, Feb. 20, the Ravalli County Commissioners unanimously adopted by resolution a revision of Ravalli County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) which was originally adopted in 2006. The revised plan went through multiple drafts, the most recent being this January following new input submitted by the Bitterroot National Forest.

Commissioner Jeff Burrows said one of the main focuses of the revision process was the development of a map depicting the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). He called the focus on the WUI map “unfortunate, because a lot of other issues got kind of lost sight of in those discussions.”

He said originally the Core Team, developed to make a recommendation about the plan, developed two maps. One identified the vulnerable infrastructure in the county which basically incorporated a lot of the lowland around the highway and some other road ways. The other outlined an area determined to be a high fire hazard zone stretching past the Forest boundary on the west side of the valley and on the east side marked by an elevation contour that loosely followed the vegetation contour. 

But following litigation in Carbon County in which the court found that their WUI extended over too large an area without any justification, it was decided to shrink the WUI in the county’s map to match the definition outlined in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act.

This map was the subject of a lot of discussions and public meetings but at the last meeting to consider adopting the Draft Map in January, a Fire Risk map developed by the Bitterroot National Forest was introduced which led to a delay in the adoption process. 

As a result, another map was drawn up to illustrate an enlarged WUI area that incorporated the new information. The Forest Service map included several contour lines showing the risk to structures in percentages ranging from 0% to 100% if a wildfire in the area was not extinguished in the initial attack. After reviewing the map, the commissioners expressed a preference to extend the draft WUI to match the 50% contour line.

Erik Hoover, Director of the Office of Emergency Services, said that following the introduction of the new fire risk map, a number of meetings were held to consider it before the Core Team decided to recommend incorporating the new map into the CWPP.

Eric Sutherland, a member of the public, encouraged the commissioners to consider concentrating on the issue of reducing the threat of wildfire with new technology with mechanization and automation a prime focus in the process. He said he and others were developing new machinery to accomplish a more efficient and effective plan.

Another member of the public, Laura Jackson, asked the commissioners what exactly had changed since the previous draft was under consideration.

Burrows said that just a couple of minor edits were done. One thing, he said, was more emphasis was placed on the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ). 

“Unfortunately there was a lot of talk that turned into those tending to oppose forest management and forest projects interpreting the CWPP as an effort to increase the scope and pace of Forest Service projects,” said Burrows. “That was unfortunate, because I think we developed a WUI map that, from a risk standpoint and fuels standpoint, makes a lot of sense. I think we created a lot of goals and objectives in the plan that make sense. HIZ’s are targeted, as well as prescribed burning and fuels reduction in the WUI. What the Forest Service does with it beyond that is up to them. They brought this risk map to us somewhat late in the game and we weren’t that familiar with it but when you see the best available science, which in my opinion is what’s out there, that wasn’t incorporated into our document, so it made sense to change that.”

“Is the 50% layer justified in any sort of science?” said Burrows. “Not necessarily. Same as a 40% or 60% wouldn’t be. But I think Commissioner Huls said it best, If you have a better chance at a flip of a coin impacting losing your property, from our standpoint that made a lot of sense. So that’s what we decided to go with.”

Burrows said the CWPP has some minor changes now that were put out for public comment but they are not significant. He said it was decided to leave a little bit of flexibility in the monitoring and updating requirements by removing any set dates so that the plan is not challenged in the future “just because we missed some deadline on timing intervals.”

Bruce Suenram, Chairman of the Board of the Hamilton Rural Fire District, said, “We support the current version of the CWPP. It gives us a bunch of tools to protect those people that are in our WUI, that there are a significant amount of, and allows us to kind of focus on the HIZ and protect our homes and businesses.” 

“There has been a lot of work done on this, a lot of interest and public comment that was reviewed and approved by the Core Team,” said Commissioner Greg Chilcott. “I really believe it’s what we intended, a grass roots process with a lot of transparency and public involvement. Our hopes were to make people safer and identify those areas of high risk and let people know where that is and provide some guidance for both the Forest Service and the fire agencies in the valley.”