Fire season demonstrates need for preventive measures

Guest Commentary:

The smoke has somewhat cleared from our summer fires and we can now sit back and reflect on what we just went through. No loss of life or homes and minor damage to private lands occurred. Granted, we burned 33,000 acres of national forest lands on the Kootenai National Forest, but it could have been much worse. Sixty thousand acres burned in 1994 and 45,000 in 2000. However, Libby had a real scare with the Klatawa fire which had the potential to have caused major damage to homes south of town. A break in the weather saved our bacon on that one.

Lincoln County and much of the west really started taking seriously our growing risk to residents in the Wildland Urban Interface(WUI) back in 2000, following the disastrous Bitterroot fires. Congress enacted the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which gave the Forest Service more flexibility in treating hazardous fuels in the WUI as well as authorizing funding to the states for treatments on private lands. As of five years ago, Lincoln County was rated as having the second highest risk in the state and the dubious honor of having the seventh highest risk in the western United States. Since 2003, we have spent nearly $1,500,000 on fuel reduction projects around homes and properties from 50/50 cost share grants.  We have treated nearly 2000 acres and conducted nearly 900 home assessments.  

Perhaps going unnoticed is the work by the Kootenai National Forest and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation in the WUI to make us safer from wildfire. The Treasure Mountain Stewardship Project created a fuel break which ended up being a made-to-order fire line on the Klatawa fire in the Granite Creek area. When you look around Libby, you see we have other defensible spaces created along the Bobtail and Lower Pipe Creek roads. We have seen both agencies planning additional treatments in the Flower Creek drainage to protect our municipal watershed and community. Future plans include treatments on the east side of town. Other major defensible spaces have been implemented around Yaak, Rexford and Fortine.

Another major improvement in our situation is the coordination of the county’s emergency management department and the sheriff’s department in developing evacuation plans, communication systems and software programs that can identify and notify those residents in harm’s way.  

All this being said, the trees keep growing and folks keep expanding into the WUI. We have made major improvements, but we must not be complacent. To live safely in such a beautiful place as Lincoln County we must all be thinking of what it will take to be FireWise. You must start with your building’s construction materials, the vegetation around your property and then proceed on to the possibility that you too will be given the order to evacuate. We must not become complacent. 

For more information on becoming FireWise, receiving fuel reduction grants and other information for homeowners check out our local website at www.lcfiresafe.com or your local fire department.

– Mike Cole, Mark Peck and Greg Larson are Lincoln County commissioners