South of Glacier National Park in northwest Montana lies the community of Bigfork, a textbook wildland-urban interface community. The 2000 U.S. Census puts the population at approximately 1,500 citizens, but there are more than 3,500 citizens in the fire district, which includes the surrounding community and a lot of square miles.

The fire district is mostly forested with mature trees such as Douglas firs and Ponderosa pine and has winding, rural roads and often long distances between houses. Many residents live in homes enmeshed in forested acreage and the rest of the population is scattered throughout a combination of rolling, forested terrain and foothills with some large mountains to the east. To the west of the community sits Flathead Lake.

As both a structure and a wildland firefighter in a community like this one, I understand the potential hazards of wildfire. I also understand all too well that if our district is ever faced with a large, intense wildfire, we simply won't have the resources to defend all the homes threatened. One of the biggest challenges I face — along with most other fire chiefs in WUI areas — is getting residents to understand this potential threat and to take individual responsibility to proactively mitigate their vulnerability to wildfire on their property.

We have used the Firewise Communities program to provide a framework for promoting personal responsibility in wildfire preparedness. The Firewise Communities program is a model for involving homeowners, community leaders, and others with firefighters and land managers in the effort to reduce the loss of property, resources, and possibly lives to wildfire. Together we can design, build and maintain communities that are less vulnerable to wildfire and that are more in harmony with the natural environment that historically has always had forest fire events.

Getting residents involved is the key. When it comes to private property, residents are in the best position to protect it. But they must get involved before a fire ever starts.

WUI CHALLENGES

As a fire chief, the potential for a significant fire within the wildland-urban interface in my fire district concerns me greatly. Our fire department would become the lead emergency services agency charged with managing such an incident. The multiple responsibilities of life safety for my firefighters and the coordination of incoming mutual aid firefighting and contingency resources, as well as the safety of area homeowners and the general public, would be overwhelming.

A wildfire escaping initial suppression efforts and burning homes within minutes of its start would not allow time for safe evacuations, for mutual aid firefighting resources to arrive, or for us to do any effective firefighting. Such an event, during a period of extreme fire danger driven by high winds, would have the potential to destroy property and endanger lives similar to an earthquake, hurricane or tornado. It could very well be utter chaos.

Fortunately, we haven't experienced such an event in our fire district in recent memory; we have not had fires start in times of great fire danger. Thus far, we have been able to handle the initial fire starts, avoiding the destructive urban-interface fires that have occurred in other fire districts. Wildfires have been infrequent in the area. We have been lucky. Someday, when the conditions are right for fire, our luck will change and our fire district will experience such an event. The wildland-urban interface has tremendous fuel volumes from regrowth and, in the past 30 years, rural subdivision growth has expanded into forested areas full of unnaturally thick trees. Much of our rural volunteer fire district is now vulnerable and is not as fire-wise as it needs to be, but this is changing because we are emphasizing being proactive.

Collectively, fire service personnel and interface homeowners have short memories. We tend to be complacent regarding the risk and potential of wildfire. We think: “There hasn't been a large forest fire around here for 50 years.” But the forests should have experienced several large, but less severe, wildfires if natural fire events had been allowed. Wildland fire is an essential, natural process that has helped shape our wildlands for thousands of years. However, when vegetation accumulates because fire is no longer allowed, the wildland-urban interface becomes much more susceptible to extreme fires — and home loss is often an end result.

We tend to be optimists and greatly underestimate the potential for property loss and injury from wildfire. Wildland and structure firefighters tend to concentrate on fire suppression efforts and bolstering our firefighting capabilities, rather than proactive by coordinating and implementing prevention and fire behavior mitigation solutions in our interface areas to reduce our wildfire intensity and vulnerability.

Home and property owners overestimate the capabilities of our fire service organizations regarding wildfire suppression effectiveness, and they tend to underestimate the potential of wildfire loss. The reality is that interface residents have changed over time, from homesteaders who knew and used fire responsibly to transplanted residents who either fear fire or misapply it. Similarly, most of my firefighters are unfamiliar with extreme wildfire behavior, and they would not be comfortable or proficient working an intense, running interface fire.

We need to educate ourselves as firefighters, home and property owners, and wildland-urban interface residents regarding today's wildfire risk. If this risk is evident in our fire district, then we need to embrace and promote fire-wise actions as a way of reducing our risks and building communities compatible with future wildland fires.

COOPERATION IS KEY

To do this, firefighters need to train and know wildland fire and structure fire so that we are competent in both. We need to develop relationships with our mutual aid partners, including land management agencies, and accept responsibility in wildland fire roles. We must participate in mutual aid training so, when we have a big event, we work together effectively and efficiently with roles and responsibilities defined and understood. This means participating and training with partner agencies at all levels of government so we are better prepared and respond rapidly as one. By doing this, our departments will be better prepared and more willing to provide the mutual aid that will strengthen our network of wildland-urban fire response locally, regionally and nationally.

By the same token, we need to coordinate with our communities to engage them in fire preparedness. We need to conduct hazard assessments and educate residents on how to reduce their risk. The National Wildland-Urban Interface Education Conference, “Backyards and Beyond,” which will take place next fall in Denver, will focus on interagency and private-public cooperation that underscores the Firewise program. Both structural and wildland firefighters will learn how to be more proactive from this conference. (See sidebar, opposite.)

The wildland-urban interface keeps growing and expanding to new country, and the questions it brings are complex and require forethought. What mutual aid resources would we order and how would they best be used? Should sub-divisions be evacuated, or would residents be safer to shelter-in-place if a fire starts below or upwind from them? What are the safe zones, and where are they? What is the most severe fire behavior we can expect? What strategies and tactics should we use when working in residential areas? What's our water plan? How much time will we have to prepare? What needs to be done and in which order of priority?

Structural firefighters often establish a defensive position at a structure at risk for fire. As residents are evacuated, engine crews move in applying water, foam or gel on structures out in front of the fire to lessen the fire's impact. Oftentimes, vegetation around the sites is also treated. If the approaching fire is intense, fire crews will retreat to a predetermined safe area, refill their engine water and/or foam supplies, and relocate to another site ahead of the fire front and start the process all over again.

As the fire moves on, engine crews return to find varying results — from structures free from damage to smoking foundations — and wonder what happened. Why did the house where we used 500 gallons of water to wet it down burn? Are the traditional strategies of staying ahead of the fire with pump-and-go tactics the best use of our limited resources?

MITIGATION PARTNERS

We should offer interface residents — our neighbors and customers — mitigation options, such as risk assessments from crown fire, embers and radiant heat ignitions, just as we offer interior fire inspections for structural fire risks. We should offer homeowner associations and communities wildland fire risk assessments in the same manner we offer businesses fire response plans. When structure and wildland firefighters work together on these assessments, they learn from one another while giving residents a consistent message and encouraging them to make their homes fire-wise.

This collaboration provides home-owners accurate information and allows them to develop realistic expectations and personal plans, an understanding of what firefighters can and can't do, and a prediction of the fire behavior potential. The result is more Firewise home sites, more effective fire department response, less property loss and damage, and reduced firefighter and resident exposure to danger.

Preparations by the homeowner or resident before a fire starts can greatly aid in suppression efforts and, in many cases, prevent a home's ignition altogether. Creating a defensible space or an ignition zone within 100 to 200 feet from the home mostly involves removing, thinning or pruning vegetation, trees, and shrubs. It should also include eliminating the ignitable leaf or needle litter and duff accumulations. Fire-resistant or non-combustible roofing, exterior siding and deck materials, along with landscaping recommendations, may prevent a home from igniting. Crews identifying a home using both fire-wise construction and landscape recommendations may have to spend little time preparing the site or, if the need exists, may use the prepared site as a predetermined safe area.

Good preparation around structures by crews removing larger litter (leaves and needles) can be lessened by poor recognition of the ignition threat from duff — decomposed organic litter that looks like soil but can smolder slow and steady like a cigar. This material in a normal year might not support combustion, but during a drought it burns well with very little if any visible smoke. A firefighting gel product sometimes sits on top of combustible materials and will not penetrate like water containing a wetting agent. This lack of thorough coverage may lead to an ignition by burning underneath the gel, especially if it's applied too early (as often happens) and it dries out. Even buildings completely wrapped with reflective foil can burn down if fire ignites continuous avenues of dry organic duff leading right up to and under the building's foundation.

Infrastructure elements to consider include the implementation of community planning that addresses new development. Building densities, road access, construction materials, water supply and vegetation management have all proved to reduce loss from wildfire. Protecting our communities also requires becoming involved with wildland management issues and applying the proper fuel reduction measures throughout forests, natural areas and watersheds that will reduce wildfire damage to these precious community ecosystem resources and slow the fire before it reaches structures and residents.

WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD

The potential for more intense wildland fire in most rural fire districts is increasing as time goes on — especially in western forests. As fire suppression agencies, we have collectively done an outstanding job of controlling most of the small fires in our fire districts over the past century — during which time wildland and forest vegetation continued to grow, creating greater fuel volume and, therefore, more potential for extreme wildfire behavior.

If changes in weather patterns mean more days each year where wildfire could be a significant event, and if periods of drought and severe weather continue, our wildfire risk compounds. The next generation of interface fires could very well be much more intense and more destructive, and our future successes will hinge not on increased fire suppression responsibility, but on how we react as communities before these events occur.

Firefighters need to rethink our traditional mind set of, “We will defend your home in whatever condition,” and rather embrace the philosophy that, “We will work together to manage our wildfire risk and properly mitigate our homes and communities before these events occur.”

Rick Trembath is fire chief of the Bigfork (Mont.) Fire Department and has been a structure firefighter for 29 years. He has 39 seasons of wildland fire assignments in 18 states from 1966 to 2005. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a bachelor of science degree in forestry.

NWCG's ‘Backyards and Beyond’ Provides WUI Education

A great opportunity for structural and wildland firefighters to learn more about FIREWISE Communities is coming up this fall. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group's Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Working Team will host its second “Backyards and Beyond” Conference in Denver, Nov. 2-4.

Residents, community leaders, planners, developers, builders, landscape designers and practitioners, real estate and insurance professionals, and fire emergency operation managers will again come together with FIREWISE community representatives and state liaisons to share information and techniques for protecting lives, property and natural resources from fire in the wildland-urban interface.

The first national conference, held in November 2004, saw more than 500 participants from a wide variety of industries, including a presentation by Rick Trembath, who shared his experience as fire chief in Bigfork, Mont. As in 2004, the 2006 conference will offer an exciting forum for discussion and education on wildland-urban interface issues, including assessment, planning, safety, fire suppression, mitigation and resources. The conference will explore best practices for bringing together diverse interests to develop and implement local community wildfire mitigation solutions.

Visit www.firewise.org for registration materials and conference updates.