Wildland Fire
WESTERN WILDFIRES
Senator Baucus Strategizes on Firefighting Funding
In the wake of a particularly long, dry and costly fire season in the West, Montana Senator Max Baucus talked strategy with state and federal firefighting officials in Missoula Monday on how best to fight and fund management of wildfires in 2008 and beyond.
Baucus arrived at the Smokejumper Center with a couple of his own ideas, ways agencies can escape the cycle of "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as he put it -- tapping money from other sources when firefighting bills exceed what’s been appropriated.
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Montana Wildfires
Battle Over Chopper Safety Hindered Firefighting EffortsThe Flathead Beacon has a startling story today about a pitched battle within the Montana state firefighting community over the safety of helicopter operations and specifically the actions of the state's chief pilot, Chuck Brenton. The controversy began with a harrowing incident on the 2006 Bearmouth Fire outside Missoula, and when the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation initially declined to conduct an investigation it bled over into the 2007 fire season, when some fire crews were ordered not to fly in DNRC choppers for a month in the midst of the fire season. Read all the details here on the Beacon website.
Timber giant takes a hit
Plum Creek’s Risky Businesses
As the Plum Creek Timber Company becomes increasingly prominent in the real estate game, the nation’s biggest private landowner is learning to deal with the ebbs and flows of those two unpopular headline grabbers of late: the weak housing market and its associated credit worries.
Less than a week after the timber giant reported that third quarter profits were down 36 percent from last year, the company’s director of land asset management in Montana, Jerry Sorensen, spoke to a room of about 300 – including prominent developers, Realtors, planners and economists from around the Northwest – about Plum Creek’s transition into the real estate market at the second annual NewWest.Net Real Estate and Development of the Northern Rockies Conference. Sorensen opened up his presentation with a Bob Dylan quote: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
“The timber industry,” Sorensen said, “is certainly in transition – everybody knows that.”
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Logging Against the Clock
Timber Salvage Underway After a Tough Fire Season
Timber companies and sawmills endured multiple work stoppages during 2007’s severe fire season, but while flames still flickered, officials at the Plum Creek Timber Company were already planning how to salvage the lumber from tens of thousands of burned acres.
According to Plum Creek’s Regional Northwest Manager Tom Ray, the company suffered roughly 41,000 acres of burned land from the summer’s five major fires: Brush Creek, Chippy Creek, Jocko Lakes, Mile Marker 124 and Black Cat fires. Although it’s too early to say definitively, Ray estimates about one-third of what was burnt will be salvageable. Plum Creek announced earlier this month that, after salvage logging, it will still have lost about $4 million in timber.
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lots of action in the lolo
Tallying Up the 2007 Fire Season
An extended fire season exacerbated by severe drought made for higher burn totals than normal this summer, according to National Forest officials who are in the midst of tallying up figures for the 2007 season.
For the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests, while the number of fires caused by humans and lightning did not increase dramatically, the number of acres that burned did. In some cases, though, officials let the fires burn as part of fuel reduction programs.
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Fire Prevention
Controlled Burns on the Front RangeIt's the season for controlled burns, and this week's warm dry weather has seen parks and wildlands officials conducting two along the Front Range.
All week a burn has been going on at the new Staunton Park, southwest of Denver along Highway 285, sending billowing clouds of white smoke billowing over the area. About 75 acres of underbrush and leaf litter will burned to thin out the dense ponderosa pine forest in preparation for the opening of the park, which will become the state's 43rd state park.
On Friday the county Parks and Open Space Department will set about 44 acres alight in Betasso Preserve, west of Boulder (and bordering our property in Four Mile Canyon). The preserve will be closed to visitors.
waiting for the "season-ending event"
Rain Slows Activity, But Montana’s Fire Season Not Quite OverRainfall and cooler temperatures across Montana have slowed fire activity over the past few days, but fire officials are stopping short of calling the weather a season-ending event.
“That’s a tough one,” Incident Commander Glen McNitt of the Jocko Lakes fire said. “Certainly it’s a good sign, but in all likelihood, there’re still going to be some smokes out there.”
Fire officials working the Ahorn and Fool Creek fires similarly avoided the phrase “season-ending” in their discussions of recent weather.
“The fire activity is way down at this point,” Public Information Officer Ted Pettis said. However, precipitation in the region has been scattered, ranging from reports of 5-8 inches of snow from fire lookouts stationed above 6,000 feet to a tenth of an inch of rain recorded in lower elevations.
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multimedia slideshow
A Smokejumper’s Life Between Leaps
This summer in Montana, dozens of wildfires consumed hundreds of thousands of acres of parched land. Yet thousands more were left unaffected by fire, partially due to the initial and rapid response of the people who make up one of the West's most romanticized and revered professions: Smokejumpers.
It's easy enough to see where the fascination with smokejumping stems: Tough, dirty firefighters, padded up for flight, readying themselves to jump into a forest afire. But, when you get personal, you see there is so much more to smokejumping than just the adrenaline, the sweat and the bravery. It's what happens before the jumps, after the jumps and between the jumps that captured NewWest.Net photographer Anne Medley's attention.
During the height of fire season in August, Anne hung out with Missoula-based rookie smokejumper Carrie Johnson as she prepared to jump. Click the image for a multimedia glance into Carrie's life as a smokejumper.
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growth and the wildland urban interface
Forest Fires Burning Up More Tax Dollars Than TreesThis might be one for the is-anybody-surprised department, but a new study concludes that continued rapid development of the wildfire-prone private land in western states will not only put more homes and firefighters at risk, but firefighting costs will soar, likely into climb into the billions of tax dollars spent annually in the coming years.
That cheery news comes courtesy of a press release today from Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Montana.
In a county-by-county study of 11 western states, Headwaters found that only 14 percent of the so-called "wildland urban interface" has been developed, which means what we've seen in recent years is sure to get much worse.
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smoky skies -- still
Stage 1 Air Quality Alert in Effect for Missoula ValleyA Stage 1 Air Alert is in effect for the Missoula Valley today, according to a press release issued this morning by the Missoula City-County Health Department. Areas of dense smoke are expected until later this afternoon based on current weather forecasts.
A meteorologist at the National Weather Service said that current wind conditions are bringing in smoke from the Jocko Lakes and Sawmill Complex Fires to the east. The 36,000 acre Jocko Lakes fire is 95 percent contained and the 63,000 Sawmill Complex fire is 35 percent contained.
Missoula-City County Health Department officials recommend that people with heart or lung disease, smokers, children and the elderly limit their time outdoors today and avoid heavy or prolonged exertion.
For more smoke information or air quality updates visit www.co.missoula.mt.us/EnvHealth or call the Missoula Air Quality Hotline at 258-3600.
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