Bozeman News

FireSafe Montana Conference

Rural Growth, Climate and the Wildland-Urban Interface

By David Nolt, 2-27-08

Photo courtesy of Montana DNRC.

The wildfire issue is a pressing one in the New West. Fire seasons are getting longer and drier by the year, fires are more severe, and, to top it off, the modern western migration is bringing an unprecedented influx of homes into the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

As wildland fire suppression operations increasingly consume dwindling Forest Service budgets and taxpayers grow ever wearier of footing the pricey bill of defending homes in the WUI, the onus for preparation and protection is increasingly falling on homeowners and local communities.

In 2006, interested parties from the public and private sector gathered in Helena at the Montana Communities and Wildfire Conference to begin a new discussion on the WUI and the West’s changing fire seasons. According to organizers, participants expressed overwhelming support for the formation of a non-governmental non-profit to perform public education, outreach and on-the-ground assistance in wildfire mitigation in the WUI. The result is FireSafe Montana, which held its first annual conference in Bozeman this week.

“Growth in Montana has certainly created issues along the interface that are really challenging for the local fire community,” Gallatin County Administrator Earl Mathers said, opening the conference. “Policy from above is well and good, but the real work is done at the local level.”

Though wildfires are now more often allowed to run their natural course, the West is still living with the effects of yesteryear’s suppression policies. Montana has no shortage of choked, overgrown forests, and the presence of more and more homes in and along these forests all but guarantees more suppression. 

The goal of FireSafe Montana is to prepare and protect people living in the WUI while simultaneously restoring forest health and reducing the need for large-scale suppression. The group’s main work is assisting local FireSafe councils in educating residents in the WUI and helping them create “survivable space” around their homes and communities – a clearinghouse of sorts for WUI residents.

According to FireSafe Montana organizer Pat McKelvey, FireSafe mitigation means homeowners can not only be active in making their property safer but also in restoring unhealthy, overgrown forests. Careful, selective thinning, according to McKelvey, is essential in making forests healthier and safer.

“Our decisions are about what trees to leave,” McKelvey explains. “All our work is environmentally sensitive.”

Not even one year old, the organization is already creating strong relationships between environmentalists, loggers and the firefighting community. Jake Kreilick of the Wild West Institute and FireSafe Montana summed up the organization’s task by saying, “We are responsible to a whole bunch of ecosystems and social expectations.”

The Tri-County FireSafe Working Group, a precursor to FireSafe Montana, has raised over $3 million in grants using matching funds from federal, state and private sectors to be used for education and wildfire fuels reduction in the state. FireSafe Montana organizers plan to follow a similar approach. Pat McKelvey says mitigation and restoration work can also be a boon to local economies, which was literally on display at the conference by companies offering everything from in-home fire retardant sprinkler systems to smokeless, sparkless wood burners.

New homes in the WUI have certainly been a boon to Lars Forsberg, owner of Andesite Property Rehab. Forsberg’s business specializes in wildfire fuels reduction, but his clients are not your run-of-the-mill Montanans; the majority of his work takes place in Big Sky at the ritzy Yellowstone Club. Virtually all of the Yellowstone Club is in the WUI, and Forsberg kept himself plenty busy last summer.

“Last year was maniacal,” Forsberg says with a hesitant smile. “I worked seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. from mid-April to mid-September. I was losing my mind.”

Losing his mind, maybe, but he was also making a pretty penny in the process; Andesite’s business has tripled every year since its inception.

Peter Stark of North Slope Sustainable Wood is also finding a niche in wildfire fuel reduction. Stark presented the story of how he turned a forest restoration on his property outside of Missoula into a thriving business offering high quality, local wood products.

As the discussion turned from wildfire business to policy, Forest Service Helena District Management Officer Dave Larson weighed the benefits of his job against the larger issue of societal priorities such as education and care for veterans.

“I’m a firefighter, but I’m also a dad,” Larson said. “I think of all the good we could do with that money.”

Exact numbers for fire suppression costs are hard to come by, but according to the Montana Department of Natural Resource Conservation (DNRC), firefighters suppressed wildfire on 74,482 acres last year. Fire information officers at the conference threw out numbers of between $6,000 and $9,000 per acre for suppression costs last year. According to the DNRC, about 47 percent of the costs of structure protection are borne by Montana taxpayers. So, the fires of 2007 cost taxpayers somewhere between $210 million and $315 million, give or take a million.

“The rate of new construction [in the WUI] is definitely a concern,” Paula Rosenthal of the DNRC said.

The DNRC is being proactive in the face of development in the WUI by forming guidelines and educational programs, according to Rosenthal, and FireSafe Montana can aid in that process.

“The biggest thing the councils can do at this point is help county governments get a hand on all this development.”

Insuring homes in the WUI is another pressing issue. Don Lorenson of State Farm Insurance was on the steering committee for FireSafe Montana, and he was also the conference’s lone representative from the insurance industy – an industry he says is largely uneducated and absent on wildfire issues.

“The biggest losses to the insurance industry are due to hurricanes,” Lorenson explains. “Wildfire is a relatively small part, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

Lorenson said even something as simple as an “insurance company-friendly” form for WUI residents would go a long way in helping homeowners and insurance companies. The form would allow underwriters to better identify the complex risk issues involved in a particular home. With the trend of more high-value homes entering a volatile wildfire environment, Lorenson says a little insurance could go a long way.

Climate, Community Preparedness and Wildfire’s Forgotten Victims

On Tuesday morning, Faith Anne Heinsch of the Montana State University Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group presented on climate change’s effects on wildfire in Montana. Heinsch contributed to University of Montana climate scientist Steven Running’s work on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using historical climate analysis and sophisticated computer modeling, Heinsch presented a stark assessment of the futures of Montana and the Northern Rockies.

The average temperature in Montana has risen 1.5° to 2°F in the last century. Twelve of Montana’s last 13 years ranked as the warmest on state record. A dramatic increase in Montana March temperatures is resulting in mountain snowpack melting three weeks earlier. Since 1986, the western fire season has increased by 78 days with a four-fold increase in fires over 1,000 acres and a six-fold increase in the number of acres burned. All of this adds up to increased wildfire, pest epidemics, forest mortality and a decrease in streamflows and biodiversity.

“We’re looking at this being more of what we can expect over the next 10 to 15 years,” Heinsch explained. “The real thing that’s going to drive things here is precipitation.”

Precipitation is the hardest climate system to model, but Heinsch says Montana can expect a shift from snow to rain in the winter and less precipitation in the summer resulting in 30 to 50 percent less streamflow. By 2050, according to Heinsch’s models, Montana could be 5°F warmer with 10 percent less precipitation.

Heinsch summed up her message for the conference in one simple phrase: “Conditions are going to be riper for fire.”

As the effects of climate change are felt around Montana, a FireSafe group in the state’s capital is leading the way in large-scale community preparedness in Montana’s capital. Sonny Stiger and Steve Larson of the Tri-County FireSafe Working Group presented their work on public education in Helena, where the entire southern boundary of the city lies within the WUI. Stiger, Larson and others mapped fire zones around the city and also orchestrated a citywide ban on shake shingles, which are more prone to catching fire from spot embers.

Wildfires in Helena’s south hills and in Bozeman’s Hyalite area would also pose very serious threats to both cities’ water supplies. Forest Service Bozeman District Ranger José Castro spoke briefly on a long-term plan he is spearheading to protect the Hyalite Reservoir and Sourdough Creek water supplies, which produce 98 percent of Bozeman’s drinking water. Castro said a large fire in the Hyalite area would effectively shut off Bozeman’s water supply due to sediment contamination in the water. Such an emergency would likely require a FEMA response to bring water into Bozeman, and the erosion effects on the watershed would be felt for decades.

The keynote address on Tuesday came from Bob Mutch, 38-year Forest Service veteran of fire management and research. Mutch gave an emotional presentation on the catastrophic California fires of 2003. Twenty-three people died in the fires, one of which was a firefighter, and Mutch said “22 of those 23 people were essentially forgotten.”

“You can hardly find a word anywhere on those civilian deaths,” Mutch said.

Mutch organized a report on the civilians’ deaths published by the Lessons Learned Center. Using pictures of 16 of the civilians who died in the fires, Mutch gave – by memory – the victims’ names and stories, choking up several times during the presentation. Mutch also told the story of the six other civilian victims, all men over the age of 50 who died of heart attacks as they watched their homes burn.

“What can they tell us,” Mutch asked. “Why have we forgotten them…Where is our compassion? How could we in the Forest Service write reams of papers on a firefighter and blow off the rest as not worth the ink?”

Mutch’s sober presentation underscored the human stakes at issue in the wildland-urban interface. He emphasized the need for the United States to drastically change its approach to the WUI with a greater emphasis on “Prepare, Stay and Defend.” Mutch received a standing ovation as he closed by commending the efforts of FireSafe Montana.

“You’re on the right course. You’re on the right track.”

Correction: This story originally stated FireSafe Montana has raised over $3 million in grants. This is the amount the Helena-based Tri-County FireSafe Working Group has raised over the years. The error has been corrected.

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