BACK 40 FIRE SEASON:

BY AMANDA LOUDIN

Editor’s note: This story originally published in the summer 2021 issue of Mountain Outlaw

Schelly Olson understands well the danger of wildfires to people, public lands and private property. As assistant chief for the Grand Fire Protection District No. 1 in Granby, Colorado, Olson also volunteers as chair for Grand County’s wildfire council. She spent much of her 2020 summer helping disseminate information and educate the public on these topics, not only in Colorado, but in other parts of the West as well.

It was some sort of cruel plot twist, then, that in October, Olson lost her home to the East Troublesome Fire. “We had done a good deal of mitigation, clearing dead and downed trees in the area,” she says. “We had a marshy wetland nearby and a lot of open space and green grass.”

The Olsons also lived in a home built with fire prevention in mind: the right materials, the right landscaping and the right ignition zone, referring to the 200 feet surrounding a home that can make a property vulnerable to fire. In spite of it all, the Olson home was one of 300 destroyed in Grand Lake by the fire that burned through more than 200,000 acres. “The winds were coming in at over 100 miles per hour,” says Olson.

While Olson heard repeatedly that the East Troublesome Fire was unprecedented—and it was in terms of size—she also knew that wildfires in the West are getting bigger, longer and more dangerous. As more people move into the wildland-urban interface—where the forests meet communities—lives and properties are more vulnerable than ever. To stand a fighting chance, an all-hands-on-deck approach is needed, say experts like Olson. “Partnerships and collaboration are key to all of this,” she says. “We need to use every tool in our toolbox.”

Kimiko Barrett, wildfire research and policy lead at Headwaters Economics, in Bozeman, Montana, agrees. “For so long, all of our fire mitigation efforts were focused on wild lands,” she says. “But the last few years have shown us that we cannot rely only on forest management. We now need to look actively at the neighborhood and community level.”

How we got here

To understand how to get out of a dangerous place, it’s important to first recognize how you arrived there. One piece of the puzzle is the historical approach to wildfire management, says Max Rebholz, wildfire preparedness coordinator with Missoula County in western Montana. “We have a long history of fire suppression dating back to the Great Burn of 1910,” he explains. “That shaped fire policy all the way into the early 2000s.”

The result of this approach, says Rebholz, is the growth of more trees, thicker stands of trees and more undesirable species. “In western Montana, we have a lot more Douglas fir than we used to,” he says. “This is a species that is vulnerable to insects and disease, and therefore dies off and becomes more of a fire hazard.”

Add in climate change to the mix—longer summers, shorter springs, decreased snowpack and overall precipitation—and you have another part of the recipe.

The final contributing factor completes the deadly cocktail: ever-encroaching building practices, whereby neighborhood and community lines move closer to wild lands. In Montana alone, for instance, the number of homes in moderate- and high-wildfire risk areas has nearly doubled since 1990. This is where coordinated efforts stand to make the biggest impact on fire reduction. But in the West, where rugged individualism has long ruled the day, this can often be the toughest issue to tackle.

All hands on deck

Ali Ulwelling, forestry assistance and fire information specialist at Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, based in Kalispell, Montana, says that she spends time learning from other communities that have suffered devastation from wildfires. From there, she sets out to educate.

“California is different from Montana, and even northwest Montana is different from Bozeman,” Ulwelling says. “It’s important to understand the conditions and then set the context.”

There is longstanding research, however, that crosses geography lines when it comes to mitigating fire risk at the property level. “It starts by making your home resistant to ignition,” Ulwelling explains. “The roof, gutters, siding, eaves, the size of your vents and metal screening covering them are all a big deal.”

Ninety percent of the time, ember showers that fly well ahead of advancing fires are what ultimately burn down structures, according to a 2019 Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety study. Keeping embers from touching ignitable materials is key, says Rebholz, who recommends metal screening with holes as small as one-sixteenth of an inch, rather than onetwenty-fifth of an inch. “The screens should cover any areas of spacing between the home and a deck or porch, or the spacing between the porch and the ground,” he says. “You don’t want the embers to have enough heat content in them to ignite whatever is on the other side of the screen.”

Deck materials matter, too, and should be a composite rather than wood, but one critical component of fire safety on property is the home ignition zone, a concept developed in the late 1990s by retired U.S. Forest Service fire scientist Jack Cohen. The zones break out into three radiuses: The immediate zone of 5 feet around your house; the intermediate zone of 5 to 30 feet; and the extended zone of 30 to 100 feet. “Many people focus on the home and immediate zone but overlook the importance of the outer two zones,” Rebholz says.

Although Olson had checked all of the above boxes, the East Troublesome Fire was proof positive that protecting property and mitigating wildfire spread goes beyond these measures and into the community. “In my role, I get a lot of calls from people saying, ‘I’ve done everything to protect my property, but my neighbor hasn’t,’” Olson says. “They want to know if there’s anything we can do about that. Unless there are regulations and codes to follow, our hands are tied.”

This is where the battle often lies: Finding a way to get everyone to work together, from clearing lands to supporting elected officials and policies that lead to stricter rules on building.

Ulwelling supports the idea that, as a community, groups ensure they coordinate. “On a small scale, this can look like getting together with neighbors to clear dead trees and then burn the piles,” she says. “On a broader scale, it means having a community mindset for fire adaptation. Work within the community and understand that the dream five acres you just purchased comes with responsibility.”

There’s also the role of insurance companies, which some fire prevention specialists would like to see take a bigger role in education and policy setting.

Education can be essential in getting communities up to speed and supportive of such efforts. In Montana, for instance, there are plenty of resources for informing communities, from the state and federal DNRs to Headwaters to websites like Fire Safe Montana and the National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise. All, however, require leading individual homeowners to water.

“There’s definitely an element of social science involved,” says Ulwelling. “How do you motivate people to engage and work together?”

Barrett says that Headwaters approaches a variety of communities with its resources and is sometimes turned away. “Montana still has a nonregulatory climate in many places. If a community doesn’t want us, we don’t bother them,” she says. “But there are other communities that want the information and realize that as we grow, so do our fire risks.”

As Olson reflects on the traumatic loss of her home and so many others, she has one major thought: “We can’t give up hope. I don’t want people to have the attitude that losing their homes is inevitable. My goal is to build a fireadapted community.”

This, says Barrett, should be everyone’s end goal, and one she views as ultimately achievable. “When you look at history, many cities burned down before thinking deliberately about fire and adapting,” she says. “If we can apply the same attitudes and principles to the urban/wild interface, we can do it again.”

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