Washington state now setting fires to control wildfires
ROSLYN, Wash. — On Sept. 2, 2017, volunteer firefighter Chris Martin spread the word to his neighbors. The Jolly Mountain fire was raging nearby. Pack up important possessions and prepare to leave at a moment's notice.
The flames never made it to town. People stayed put, but many now live with a new sense of vulnerability.
“This was a game changer for us,” said Martin, a Roslyn volunteer firefighter who handed out the evacuation notices.
This month, on a crisp fall day, Martin once again was trying to protect the town. But this time, instead of warning of a fire, he joined 30 other men and women in setting fire to 32 ridge-top acres he owns above Roslyn.
This burn is intended to consume downed wood, brush and low-lying limbs, helping create a defensible space where firefighters could make a stand should there be another threatening summer blaze.
In the more arid ponderosapine forests of Central and Eastern Washington, these controlled burns have emerged as a key tactic in protecting communities from wildfires, which are expected to torch more acreage as climate change — spurred by greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels — warms the region. After more than a century of scrambling each summer to put out fires, the push to light them in the fall and spring represents a profound change.
U.S. Forest Service officials are eager to expand these coolseason burns on federal lands, where they have been carried out in combination with thinning accomplished with chain saws and mechanical brush cutters.
This work is no cure-all for the smoke that blanketed the Puget Sound region in August. But Forest Service officials say it could help Northwest firefighters gain better control of summer blazes, and do so from safer spaces.
Their enthusiasm is boosted by fresh reports from the wildfire front lines.
On Aug. 11, crews say some Chelan County homes along the Entiat River were spared when the fast-moving Cougar Creek fire slowed and weakened after hitting forest that had been previously thinned and burned. Five days later, other crews deployed to an area 11 miles north of Winthrop — where earlier efforts had reduced the forest-fuel load — blocked the rapid advance of the McLeod fire.
“Once the flame length drops down from 100 to 200 feet to 3 or 4 feet, then we can do something about that,” said Rob Allen, fire staff officer with the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
There also is new momentum for these burns in Olympia.
Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, elected in 2016, is pushing to launch, as early as next year, controlled burns on state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) lands, where forest managers for years have balked at such actions.
Franz also is trying to ease long-standing regulatory hurdles within DNR. The agency, in consultation with the Department of Ecology, approves permits to burn on federal, state and private land, but often turns them down out of concern about smoke pollution reaching communities.
“I'm a big supporter of prescribed fire. It's absolutely essential,” Franz said.
Some local governments also want to get involved.
In Roslyn, in the aftermath of the Jolly Mountain fire, the City Council approved thinning a 300-acre municipal forest right at the edge of town, and plans to follow up with burns.
“I believe that Roslyn is more than willing to put up with some smoke to make sure it is safer,” said Roslyn Mayor Brent Hals.
The best way to learn the skills for these burns is through hands-on experience. Over the past decade, The Nature Conservancy, in a cooperative program with federal agencies, has launched training sessions on grasslands and forests around the country, including two during the last two years in Washington state that also have involved DNR and the Washington Prescribed Fire Council.
The men and women who gathered in Roslyn came from Washington and three other western states as well as British Columbia, where wildfires this year flared on more than 3 million acres, generating much of the smoke that drifted south into Northwest communities in August.