Experts model mine area fire threats

Diane Hutton is no stranger to Libby and the Kootenai National Forest. She is the incident commander whose team was assigned to manage the Clark Fork complex of fires that swept through the Bull Lake Valley during the summer of 2015. Hutton, along with four other members of her management team, returned to Libby Jan. 22 to help the United States Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency model potential wildfire threats in the forested area surrounding the now-defunct W.R. Grace and Company vermiculite mine north of Libby, also known as Operable Unit 3 of the Libby Asbestos Superfund Site.

The project involves millions, if not billions, of variables, including topography, fuel density and conditions and historical wind and weather patterns, as well as a detailed map of historical fire starts in the area.

Canoe Gulch District Ranger Nate Gassman said the Forest Service has been mapping fire starts on the forest since the 1940s and has led the scientific world in the area of fire science. All of those historical records are being used to provide the variable data for the theoretical fires being set in various locations in and around Operable Unit 3. No actual fires have been set during the modeling, just theoretical fires inside computer models.

For each potential fire start point, the model considers 5,000 to 6,000 different variables, including high and low temperatures for the day and night, the time of day of the fire start, wind patterns and the moisture level and density of the ground fuels. From that data, several projected fire paths are calculated, which provide management personnel with vital information for resource planning and allocation. 

The fire behavior models allow fire managers to anticipate where the best points of attack are on fires, given the historical patterns and current fuel and weather conditions. That information could enable firefighters to get ahead of burgeoning wildfires and establish fire lines, breaks and other management tools as needed to prevent a fire from spreading out of control. It also allows the Forest Service to suggest a number of fire prevention treatments on growth stands to help thin out the forest and prevent the risk of future fires.

The EPA will use the data provided to help determine the final clean-up plan for the area, which is being handled independently of the remainder of the Superfund site. The record of decision which outlines the final remedy for the rest of the site is expected any day now, but OU3, which is the private property of W.R. Grace, is much further behind in the planning stages. The first phase of the EPA’s planning for the site, said project manager Christina Progess, is the forested area around the mine. After that, the planning will move to the actual mine site and the affected rivers and streams. The agency, she said, wants to incorporate some fire management recommendations in the final remedy for the site.

“As part of the remedy for the forested areas we want to include fire treatement in the remedy selection,” she said. “We know we can’t prevent fires, be we want to give firefighters a leg up to combat any fires that happen in OU3.”

Gassman stressed that the study is the first phase of understanding the behavior of fires in the asbestos-contaminated forest areas of OU3 and that the goal is to understand the behavior and direct issues of fire in the area, not to model potential particulate release.

“This is the vegetation management discussion,” he said. “This is about the fire. This isn’t the particulate discussion, yet.”

The $50,000 study is being funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, but due to the bureaucratic hurdles involved in interagency cooperation and funding issues and the very small time window available for the fire management specialists, the City County Board of Health agreed to facilitate the project. The EPA will pay the board of health, who will then pay the Forest Service and the outside staffing agency for the non-government personnel assigned to the project.

The on-site portion of the study is expected to conclude today, but with the massive volume of data being generated by the various scenarios, it could be months before the agencies have viable data to share with the county and the community at large, Gassman said.