Current News

Please click on the link to go to the article.

March 28, 2008
Legislative panel sounds fire alarm

March 27, 2008
Forest Service: Former agency chiefs endorse House wildfire bill

March 19, 2008
Amendment to forest plan being considered by Feds

March 14, 2008
Fire solutions needed, not sparking legal fights

March 10, 2008
Wildfire Academy returns to Prescott

March 7, 2008
Dems push for new emergency wildfire fund

Push 'Em Back, Push 'Em Back, Way Back!

March 6, 2008
Rey: States that back roadless forests should pay for fire costs

Forest Service officials address misconceptions about AMR and structure protection

March 3, 2008
Burn areas look 'like Ireland'

A draft legislative report warns of the likelihood that towns will burn and people will be injured or killed if Montana does not change how it deals with wildland fires.

The report was released Friday by the Fire Suppression Interim Committee as lawmakers plan a series of meetings across the state to come up with better ways to fight fires.

Last year in Montana, more than 700,000 acres burned in 72 fires tracked by the federal government. Most were sparked by lightning.

The draft report predicted more bad fire seasons because of extended drought across much of the state, rising demand for firefighting resources and more homes built in rural areas prone to fire.

"With limited resources," the report concludes, "it is likely that communities will burn and firefighters and members of the public will be injured or killed."

The committee's chairman, John Cobb, R-Augusta, said the dire warning was a call to action.

"Where we are going now, there are going to be hundreds of homes burned up," Cobb said. "What can we do differently?"

Mary Sexton, director of the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said agencies such as hers are trying adapt their firefighting strategies. But so far, she said, they have not kept pace with the threat.

"Because of the drought and the buildup of fuels, we just are not able to be as effective as we have been in the past," Sexton said.

On Friday, the committee adopted a range of alternatives to pay for firefighting efforts and to address the challenges of protecting rural homes.

For people living on the urban fringe, the committee floated a proposal for new tax incentives to encourage property owners to reduce fire risk. Other options were to give local governments more power to regulate fire reduction measures - such as removing trees close to structures - and the mandatory use of fire-resistant building materials.

Proposals to change the way the state pays for wildland fires came after lawmakers in a special session last fall set up a $40 million annual fire suppression fund.

The costs of last year's fire were even higher - $53 million. That's more than double the $20 million average over the past decade, Sexton said.

One option offered by the committee was to set aside a portion of the state's year-end budget balance for deposit in the fire suppression fund. Another possibility was to charge a per-acre fee to property owners living in areas considered at risk.

The committee must submit a final report and recommendations to the Legislature by Sept. 15.

Five former Forest Service chiefs this week endorsed a proposal by House Democrats to create an interagency fund for fighting large wildfires, saying the measure offered an essential step toward reorganizing the service.

The Forest Service has been criticized in recent years as fire suppression has burned large holes in its annual budget and put other agency priorities at risk.

In a letter to House lawmakers, the former Forest Service chiefs note that fire suppression accounts for almost half the agency funding in President Bush's fiscal 2009 budget proposal, a $148 million increase over 2008 levels.

Meanwhile, they write, other agency needs have suffered. National Forest System staffing, for example, has declined 35 percent over the last six years and the number of resource specialists available for inventories and monitoring has declined 44 percent.

"Loss of these essential personnel is intolerable," the letter says. "Our nation must find a way to fund the increasing costs of protecting these lands from fire without decimating the organization needed to protect and manage them for the American people."

The letter is signed by R. Max Peterson, who led the service between 1979 and 1987; F. Dale Robertson, 1987-1993; Jack Ward Thomas, 1993-1996; Michael Dombeck, 1997-2001; and Dale Bosworth, 2001-2007. They wrote a similar letter to lawmakers last year.

The "Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act" (FLAME Act) would allow withdrawals from the firefighting account if the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior declare that a fire 300 acres or larger is severe and complex enough to warrant special funding. Congress would provide money for the fund based on average firefighting costs over the last five fiscal years.

The bill would not change the current practice of setting the Forest Service and Interior Department firefighting budgets based on the 10-year average of fire-suppression costs but would simply remove catastrophic fires from the service's budget.

Democratic Reps. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Norm Dicks of Washington are sponsoring the bill.

Dombeck said the agency suffered from the same problem during his tenure, calling the issue reflective of the larger inadequacies of the agency's business model that is based on once-profitable timber sales.

"The days of paying for the operation of the Forest Service on the back of a large commercial timber program is outdated and needs to be modernized," Dombeck said in an e-mail response to questions. "The Rahall bill is a very positive step in the right direction. But the problem is well beyond the scope of fire."

Forest Service spokeswoman Allison Stewart said the agency was studying the effects of the fund on its operations.

Several forestry experts warned yesterday that creating a separate fund would not solve the larger question of funding wildfire management.

"We see this issue as one piece of a puzzle that if we don't address the other pieces to we won't solve the problem," said Michael Mortimer, policy director for the Society of American Foresters.

One major concern has been what would happen to the Forest Service's budget if its largest component was suddenly removed. Would other programs get more funding? Or would the agency be left with a smaller overall operating budget?

Kirk Rowdabaugh, president of the National Association of State Foresters, said fire suppression historically has accounted for about 20 percent of the agency's annual budget. Catastrophic fires in recent years have caused that portion to increase, he said.

Removing funding for catastrophic fires from the agency budget, he said, would cause the 10-year average wildfire costs to plummet and would hurt the agency's normal firefighting operations.

To maintain the firefighting budget, Rowdabaugh said lawmakers should amend the bill to recalculate the Forest Service's normal 10-year average as if the FLAME Act account has been in existence through that period to return the fire-suppression budget to its historical norm.

"We don't have 10 years to reset the 10-year average," Rowdabaugh said. "The problem is here now."

Some critics say the bill would allow the government to continue throwing money at the problem rather than attempt to fix it. In this case, they say the fund does not address the larger issue of fire management, including cost containment.

"It's kind of sending mixed messages to the agencies," said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "On the one hand, there's all this concern about cost suppression, then again there is this slush fund for fire suppression."

A Government Accountability Office report last year said agencies in both the departments of Interior and Agriculture have identified weaknesses in cost containment but have yet to define cost-containment goals or develop a strategy for achieving them.

Ingalsbee said the legislation does not adequately address forest ecology, which benefits more by letting a fire burn than by attempting to extinguish it. He said forestry efforts could be better served by working out forest management plans that would outline when a fire should be allowed to burn.

The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest is initiating the "scoping" process under the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for a project that would amend both of the Forest's Land and Resource Management Plans (LRMPs) to allow for the full range of Appropriate Management Responses (AMR) for the management of wildland fires. These responses range from aggressive fire suppression to Wildland Fire Use.

The intent of this scoping notice is to inform the public, to identify environmental issues at an early stage, and encourage involvement in the planning process. Several policies have been developed in recent years that increase the emphasis on using naturally ignited wildland fires to achieve resource objectives. This management response is referred to as "Wildland Fire Use" (WFU). When the LRMPs were developed, language regarding fire management was fairly vague. WFU is mentioned briefly for Wilderness Areas, but not for the remainder of the Forest.

There is a need for fire to be a management "tool" to help obtain resource goals across the entire landscape of the Forest. Existing direction from the LRMPs does not recognize the resource benefits that fire can provide, except in wilderness. It is my goal to allow more acres to be affected by fire, with less intensity, to obtain desired ecological conditions. AMR is the current term used to encompass the range of possible responses to unplanned fires. AMR includes both suppression and WFU responses.

Both responses allow the same range of potential management actions on the ground. The main difference is that suppression responses emphasize cost containment and minimizing damage, while WFU responses emphasize maximizing resource benefits. AMR includes a full range of management tools in which naturally ignited fires can be allowed to burn under pre-determined conditions in specific areas. The LRMP typically identifies where on the landscape WFU is an option, and where it is not. The Fire Management Plan (FMP) identifies the prescriptive criteria and implementation procedures to use for determining whether a given ignition will be managed for resource benefits and gives general direction and guidance on how a fire is to be managed.

Areas available for the complete range of AMR vary, based on a number of factors including values at risk, fuel conditions, and time of year. Forest Plan amendment(s) are proposed that would revise the Forest Plan Standards and Guidelines to allow for the consideration of a full range of AMR for the management of fires, to include Wildland Fire Use, throughout the entire Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. Terminology in the Standards and Guidelines throughout the two Forest Plans would be updated to meet current Forest Service fire terminology and policy. The scope of this project is to include the entire Forest and would utilize existing data, information, and analyses to conduct the analysis.

The Proposed Action is an administrative action involving the modification and changing of the wording for management direction and Standards and Guidelines regarding AMR. It is anticipated that this change would result in the increase in an average annual amount of burned acres. This effect would be programmatically and qualitatively analyzed by resource specialists in terms of the attainment of desired conditions.

This Proposed Action will not include nor analyze effects associated with any change not related to fire and AMR. Please submit written scoping comments regarding this project to Rob Budge, Deputy Fire Staff-Fuels, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, P.O. Box 520, Medford, Oregon, 97501.

Please include the name of the project for which you are submitting comments in the subject line. The scoping process will continue until April 4, 2008. For further information, please direct questions about this proposal to Rob Budge, Interdisciplinary Team Leader, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, phone (541) 858-2434, email: rbudge@fs.fed.us. Scott D. Conroy, Forest Supervisor and Responsible Official.

During winter, when parts of the West are more concerned about the instability of above-average snowfall causing avalanches and floods than fire risk, it's easy to forget the wildfires that have raced through public and private lands in the last few years and stretched state and federal resources to the limit.

It's easy to forget the frustrations that remain when exhausted, brave firefighters battle fires that can race through areas, saving as many homes and property as they can. It's easy to judge in hindsight the decisions that needed to be done quickly in the heat of the moment in fighting fires, and - yes - it's easy to blame people for the decisions that were made.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey found that out recently in a Missoula, Mont., Courtroom. U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy had threatened Rey with contempt of court orders that require the U.S. Forest Service study the environmental effects of a chemical fire retardant before using it on fires.

Molloy presented harsh words about Rey and the agency but eventually decided to not hold Rey in contempt of the orders, because "he said it ultimately filed the necessary documents.

He added the threat of contempt helped spur the agency into action," according to Associated Press.

"There is no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball," Rey testified in court, according to one AP story. "We're sorry."

While slow with documents, Rey's Forest Service, along with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, have not found proof that there even is significant impact from the use of the fire retardant.

But Rey faced possible jail time, house arrest and bans for the Forest Service from using any fire retardants in future fires.

Only water would have been allowed in the air tankers, and a valuable tool would be lost for firefighters. According to AP, all this was caused by a lawsuit, by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, that said fire retardant dropped in 2002 killed 20,000 fish in central Oregon.

Rey has received criticism as well as kudos for his seven years in office. He has been frustrated by paperwork and lawsuits that deal with him trying to introduce actions in national forests that could help prevent or slow future fires.

He is also a target for anti-logging groups. "Rey's signature accomplishment - passage of the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act - quickened approval of projects to thin overgrown forests, so they can be completed within months rather than years.The law, the first major change in forest management in a quarter-century, has helped restore healthy forests after decades of neglect and mismanagement, supporters say," said AP, in another story about Rey.

Ironically, at the same time Rey was facing his judgment day in court, the forest service was telling a congressional hearing how all these court days are impacting the service and its ability to fight fires.

Costly environmental reviews mean less money for fighting fires, U.S. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell told the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

"Lives and property are on the line. The federal government needs to commit more of its limited resources to actually removing hazardous fuels from the forest. We know what the problem is and don't really need to waste more time studying it," said Congressman Bill Sal, a member of the committee.

"If the Forest Service spent less on environmental reviews, more money could go towards reducing hazardous fuel loads and reducing the threat to communities, homes and lives."

Quarrels will probably continue on how is the best way to fight fires and still protect wildlife.

However, it does more harm than good to incite heated - and expensive - arguments in courts, and is ludicrous to threaten jail for officials such as Rey whose time is better allocated to find forest fire solutions than putting out legal fires.

PRESCOTT - Don Howard isn't really into jewelry, but he wears a wristband that he hasn't removed for the past three years.

Anyone who knows a wildland firefighter could guess that the phrase refers to that profession.

Howard takes his promise seriously. He volunteers countless hours as the incident commander of the annual Arizona Wildfire Academy that returns to Prescott for its sixth year Saturday.

The Wildfire Academy stresses safety over and over, every day. It's especially important in this field because hundreds of firefighters from different agencies regularly come together to battle wildfires, so their ability to suddenly coordinate their jobs in a safe manner can make the difference between life and death.

Judging by the number of firefighters who will attend the annual academy March 15-21, they understand the need for training in safety and other areas.

The academy will have 847 students in 33 courses, along with 110 seasoned firefighters who donate their time to teach and provide staff support. It takes place at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University during the university's spring break.

Tony Sciacca, a long-time firefighter on the Prescott National Forest, now is the academy's coordinator. He recently retired from his job as the fire management officer on the Bradshaw Ranger District, where he oversaw battles against numerous blazes including the 2002 Indian Fire that threatened Prescott.

This is the only academy in the state that provides broad-based wildland firefighting training to all levels of firefighters.

Many of them are volunteer firefighters who are the first responders to wildland fires and extinguish them before they threaten people, homes and natural resources.

About 100 of this year's students have no experience in wildland firefighting but want to get into the profession, Sciacca said.

While plentiful winter precipitation has dampened the wildfire danger in the high country's ponderosa pine forests this year, it also has produced thick green grass in the deserts that soon will dry out and turn brown.

Chaparral also can dry out in time for the traditional wildfire season if widespread rains don't continue.

The academy operates on Incident Command System (ICS) protocol that offers a proven method for responders to all types of emergencies to work together effectively. The ICS system can quickly expand or contract while still providing appropriate oversight over various types of emergency responders.

Howard says that he also wants to help instill the understanding in new firefighters that they are public servants.

"What I want people to know is that in the fire service, you always have somebody to talk to," Howard explained. "And I want the public to know that, too."

Academy tuition covers only about half of its costs because the academy wants to keep training affordable for rural fire departments. So the non-profit academy depends heavily on donations to continue operating.

Federal, state and local firefighting agencies, especially local agencies such as the Prescott Fire Department and Prescott National Forest, are a huge help by covering the salaries of their instructors and staff.

The Prescott Area Wildland-Urban Interface Commission and the Flagstaff-based Ponderosa Fire Advisory Council provided monetary assistance, along with Arizona Public Service and a local foundation that wishes to remain anonymous.

Much-needed grants came from the Arizona Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Forest Service's Volunteer Fire Assistance grant program.

The public is welcome to schedule visits to the academy by calling 520-400-1007.

WASHINGTON — The federal government would revamp how it pays for firefighting and take some of the burden off the U.S. Forest Service by creating a permanent fund for devastating blazes, under legislation introduced Thursday by key House Democrats.

As wildfire seasons have grown increasingly expensive over the past decade, the cost of fighting fires has eaten an ever larger portion of the Forest Service budget — now about 48 percent of it. That has left the agency with less money for other programs and priorities.

The new fund would be used only for catastrophic, emergency wildland fire suppression. It would be separate from the money budgeted each year by Congress for anticipated and predicted fire suppression activities for the Forest Service and Interior Department; that allocation would continue.

The amount of money in the new fund would be appropriated annually and based on the average amounts spent by the Forest Service and Interior to suppress catastrophic fires over the preceding five fiscal years.

Last year, the Forest Service spent $741 million more than budgeted and Interior spent $249 million more than budgeted for emergency wildfire suppression, or a total of nearly $1 billion.

The secretaries of the departments would be able to declare fires eligible for the fund by issuing a suppression emergency declaration that would evaluate the size, severity and threat of the fire.

The chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., and the heads of the relevant subcommittees introduced the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME Act. Rahall said the Forest Service has been turned into the Fire Service.

“The dramatic rise in federal costs to fight these fires has eroded critical funding for non-fire programs and severely altered the core mission of our federal land management agencies,” he said in a statement. “This legislation aims to turn this situation around.”

The other sponsors included Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands subpanel, and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee chairman.

The sponsors said 2 percent of fires, those that are not put out during the initial attack, today account for 80 percent of the costs to the agency.

The act would also require the Interior and Agriculture secretaries to submit a report to Congress one year after enactment containing a cohesive wildland fire management strategy.

That would include a system identifying the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management resources, a system for assessing the level of risk to communities, an illustration of plans to reinvest in nonfire programs, a description of use of appropriate management response, and a system ensuring that the highest priority fuels reduction projects are being funded first.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced similar legislation in the Senate last summer.

That bill, the Stable Fire Funding Act, would authorize $600 million in seed money to create a trust fund for the Forest Service and $200 million in seed money for a BLM trust fund. That money would generate interest and be used to cover 80 percent of firefighting costs that exceed the agencies’ annual budget.

He described it as a stop-gap measure that would kick in during some years but not others. More money would be added to the fund as necessary. The Senate bill remains in committee.

The Wilderness Society praised the House bill as “a key step in the right direction.”

“However, this is only one part of the solution,” said Jaelith Hall-Rivera, a wildfire policy analyst with the group. “We also need to continue to focus on managing fire cost-effectively, and probably most importantly, restoring our forests to a state where fire can once again play its natural role.”

Although the reactionary ideologues appointed by the Bush administration to privatize public lands are still up to mischief and will still damage our heritage in their remaining 10 months, you can sense that the resistance is growing in effectiveness.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey avoided going to jail for his agency's refusal to comply with federal court orders on evaluating the safety of fire retardants, but he was forced to stand before Judge Donald Malloy and admit, "We're beyond the point of making excuses and there's no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball."

Rey also had to drop his proposed massive restructuring of the Forest Service, one that would have pulled almost all the biologists and other resource specialists out of the national forests and placed them into six regional offices where they could be more closely monitored for sticking to the headquarters' political line even at the expense of the science. On February 20, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimball announced that the Agency would abandon that plan in order to "avoid additional disruption and confusion." Then the Agency found itself being sued by America's most popular Republican, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for proposing to open up four National Forests in Southern California to roads and oil drilling. California Attorney General Jerry Brown, representing the Governor, said that "the Bush administration is just operating with reckless disregard for the public trust."

Meanwhile, over at the Interior Department, the ride keeps getting rougher. When the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to back out of an agreement to decide whether or not the sage grouse required protection under the Endangered Species Act, the federal courts slapped the Agency down and said, "Comply."

And when Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne decided to "flush" the Grand Canyon with a simulated springtime flood, the rest of the department publicly called the idea ill-timed and poorly planned -- Kempthorne went ahead anyway, but what he had hoped would be a feather in his cap turned into a PR nightmare.

RENO, Nev. — California and other states that want to ban road-building in large swaths of national forests should have to pay for the resulting increased costs of fighting wildfires on those federal lands, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said Thursday.

Rey, the undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in charge of the U.S. Forest Service, said the Bush administration has encouraged states and local governments to offer input in the management of federal lands.

But he told a Wildland Urban Interface conference that one of the unintended consequences is that state-imposed moratoriums on development in roadless areas boost the cost of fighting fires because of reduced access to housing subdivisions that sprout up on the edge of those forests.

"In a number of cases, most recently in the state of California, the states have weighed in with a profound desire not to see any roadless area incurred as a broad matter of environmental priorities. And I frankly don't have any quarrel with that as a statement of environmental policy," Rey said.

"However, if we are going to keep those areas completely undeveloped and not even maintain the option for access for administrative and suppression purposes, we're going to increase the cost and complexity of suppression to protect those new subdivisions. That's a given with which their is almost no dispute," he said in a speech to the conference in Reno sponsored by the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

"I for one am completely willing to defer to a state's views in this area as long as the state is willing to pick up the additional costs associated with those views being converted into federal land policy," he said.

The state of California filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service last month for adopting a management plan that would allow for the construction of roads and oil drilling in California's largest national forests.

The lawsuit filed in federal court claims the plan ignores a state moratorium on road construction in pristine areas of national forests and asks for an injunction.

The Forest Service plan would open up more than 500,000 acres in the Angeles, Los Padres, Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests to road construction. It would also allow for oil drilling on more than 52,000 acres in or around Los Padres National Forest.

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. said in filing the lawsuit on Feb. 28 that the federal plan was unacceptable at a time when these forests were already under threat by development and pollution, and are some of the last natural lands available to millions of Californians. The forests are in or near Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties and are the most urban-impacted forests in the National Forest system.

"As California gets millions more people and more pollutants impact these forests ... to compound the damage that already exists with roads and more vehicles and more industrial activity is just wrong," Brown said.

U.S. Forest Service officials will not formally respond to recommendations that Montana fire chiefs offered last month to the legislature's interim study committee. But officials emphasized to the Chronicle that the protection of homes and outbuildings--structure protection--remains near the very top of firefighters' priorities.

The top priority, always, is life safety--the safety of firefighters and the public, explained Chuck Stanich, the fire management officer for the Lolo National Forest.

"Life safety we hold in highest regard on every fire, every time, everywhere," Chuck said. "Once we take care of that, then we go to the next priority."

The next priorities are typically protecting the community's "values at risk," which usually include structures, and other cultural and natural resources, such as watersheds.

Those objectives and priorities are established in discussions long before the first start of the fire season, documented in formal plans and agreements, and communicated across a wide range of federal, state, and local firefighting partners, Chuck explained.

Frenchtown Fire's Scott Waldron appeared in Helena earlier this month to present the state fire chiefs' report, and offered his perspective on the Black Cat Fire in response to the committee's questions. He alleged that Forest Service firefighters were not allowed to engage in structure protection, and testified that the agency's policy of "Appropriate Management Response" could endanger communities.

Without directly addressing Waldron's statements, Forest Service officials said they hoped to clear up any possible misconceptions about Forest Service policy.

"Appropriate Management Response is not new policy. It really didn't change anything," Chuck explained.

Under the AMR policy, fire officials have had the ability to allocate resources flexibly on different flanks of the fire. When a fire is burning away from communities, they can choose to let that flank burn and accomplish fuel reduction objectives.

"On suppression fires, some parts of the fire perimeter may be allowed to spread while firefighting resources are being deployed in the higher priority areas along the fire perimeter. Again, it’s a function of the values at risk," Chuck said.

Ninemile District Ranger Garry Edson pointed out that this occurred during the 2004 Cedar Log Fire, part of the Fish Creek Complex. The southwestern edge of that fire was allowed to burn away from communities into the Great Burn area.

"We didn't take suppression activities on those flanks of the fire because it was burning away into the Great Burn and there were limited resources," Garry explained. "Some of the teams wanted to go fight it but we said, 'No, we're going to let it go that way. If it's burning into the Great Burn, it's not threatening anybody.'" Firefighters instead focused on the eastern flank of the fire, moving in the direction of Petty Creek and Alberton.

Another type of approach is called "fire use," a classification given to the entire incident. Although firefighters can employ "fire use" in wilderness areas such as the Bob Marshall and the Great Burn, that does not mean that they always will, the officials emphasized. In fire use, the entire fire is monitored and allowed to burn, as it would in a fire-dependent ecosystem.

Given the extreme fire conditions in 2007, however, officials chose not to allow any fire use fires on the Lolo, said Forest Supervisor Debbie Austin.

The overall picture sketched out by the three Forest Service officials suggested the increasing complexity in managing fires with a wide variety of agencies--as well as private contractors--with different jurisdictions and different responsibilities.

"With the issues and problems we currently have in our ever-expanding wildland-urban interface, there's no single agency that has the capabilities to resolve all the issues," Chuck said. "Our strength is operating collectively together to bring all of our capabilities, all of our resources to the table, and work together to resolve those problems. And when I say together, I don't just mean wildland fire agencies or the structure protection agencies or the contractors, I mean the public as well. It's our problem and it's going to take all of us to resolve it."

Big fires cost a lot of money, and all of the state and federal agencies involved are always interested in reducing costs, Chuck said.

One of the new initiatives is to improve how authority is delegated from the agencies to the incident command team on the fire. The IC teams need to be able to make decisions rapidly as conditions change, yet each agency is still accountable for its areas of responsibility.

In the past, each agency has written its own letter delegating authority to the firefighting team.

This past summer, Chuck said, he and Debbie began talking about a joint delegation of authority. "We focused on how to communicate our leaders' intent to the teams we're hosting and be more clear and concise, make it more free of misunderstanding and confusion. We decided we were going to tear up our delegation of authority and put it back together, and really focus our attention on the leader's intent."

He said they met with their partners and are currently developing a joint delegation of authority letter to the team.

"We're hoping to improve on spelling out our expectations of the team, and how they will manage that incident. That's agreed to by all the parties. Oftentimes it can be two, three, or four parties that sign that particular agreement," Chuck said. "The reason agency administrators focus so much attention on them is that we hold ourselves accountable and that's how we are going to measure our successes. Were we successful in clearly explaining our expectations to the team? Did they implement and do what we asked them to do? Those are going to be our discussion points as we move through the incident."

That joint delegation letter will likely roll out during the next fire season, he said, emphasizing that improved communication is the key to protecting safety and saving money.

"That's what it is all about--having that clear understanding of roles, responsibilities, and capabilities. You have to maintain that dialog. You just can't just do it for the 20 minutes before that incident and during the incident. It has to occur all year long and that's how we're going to be successful as cooperators," he said.

Clear and concise communication is also essential in maintaining the safety of firefighters out on the line.

"We want all our firefighters to do a little bit of thinking before they start chinking," he said. "We want them to develop a plan, whether verbal or in writing, identify the hazards and the values at risk, mitigate those, clearly communicate the leaders' intent to all the people working with and for them, and then boldly engage in their mission. Those are the things we talk about on each and every fire, if it's just a tenth acre spot, or a huge multi-jurisdictional multi-agency event."

The agency also will continue to rely on a rapid and aggressive initial attack to contain and control wildfires as quickly as possible, he said.

"That's our most efficient and effective strategic option," Chuck said, pointing out that Forest Service firefighters were 98 percent successful in initial attack on 197 wildland fires on the Lolo National Forest during 2007. "That's pretty phenomenal."

He praised the Superior Ranger District in particular, which successfully managed 18 fires using a Type 3 organization, extinguishing them in a very timely manner. "We're asking a lot more of our local units in today's firefighting environment."

NORTH COUNTY -- The charred, denuded hills left behind by October's infernos are bursting with life again, showing off thick green carpets of new grass and, in some places, the vibrant colors of wildflowers such as the bright-orange California poppy.

As breath-taking as the emerald landscape is, it is also a threat to the environment and will become by summer a dangerous, flammable thatch of dry weeds that could spark the next wildfire.

"Everybody says, 'Oh, it looks like Ireland,'" said Rick Halsey, director of the Escondido-based California Chaparral Institute and an expert on Southern California's native plant communities.

But Halsey said the vivid green is largely a sign of an unhealthy ecosystem being invaded by foreign plants that crowd out native vegetation and reduce the food supply for wildlife -- and tend to spread after fire. The exotic grasses dry out in the heat of Southern California summers, for which they are not prepared, and will burn much easier than recovering native vegetation, he said.

"It's definitely greening up," said Shawna Anderson, environmental planner for the 55-mile-long San Dieguito River Park, about half of which burned in the 198,000-acre Witch Creek fire. "But a lot of what you see is just nonnative grasses."

Many of the wildflowers, on the other hand, are California natives. And out in the desert, visitors are enjoying a brilliant wildflower show for the first time in three years.

Halsey said the emerald carpet that has replaced the extensive layer of ash is largely the result of foreign grasses and weeds that were brought over by Europeans in California's early days.

They tend to bounce back faster than native plants. But they also turn brown in summer while slower-growing natives build up strength to survive the region's long, hot and dry summers, Halsey said.

At this point, the nonnatives are simply springing up where they already had sunk roots. But because they grow fast, they could spread to other areas before native plants come back, Anderson said.

River park officials are particularly concerned about the arundo, pepperweed and tamarisk shoots that are coming back "like gangbusters," she said.

In the back country, Halsey said, there is a danger hardy chaparral shrubs -- such as chamise, manzanita and ceanothus -- could disappear from those mountains and canyons that burned twice in the last four years, in both the 2003 Cedar and 2007 Witch Creek fires.

"I have seen one hell of a lot of fires," said retired rancher Warren Hooper, 72, who used to run cattle in the Ramona area. "And the brush always comes back."

Following the October fires, Kit Wilson, an environmental consultant in Escondido who has mapped the region's plant communities, reported that 133,000 acres of chaparral burned in San Diego County. Wilson said a quarter of it also burned in the Cedar fire.

When chaparral burns twice in less than a decade, Halsey said, it is in danger of being wiped out. That's because the young plants haven't reached the point where they produce seeds.

Fueled by a winter of plentiful rain, some native plants that burned in the Witch Creek fire have reached the point where they are doing well again.

Anderson said willow and mule fat are reviving along the banks of the San Dieguito River.

And Halsey said native wildflowers are springing up in many places. For example, one can hardly miss the California poppies on the south-facing slopes along Del Dios Highway southwest of Escondido.

The vibrant blooms also are inspiring droves of Southern Californians to head to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in eastern San Diego County.

Boosted by near-normal rainfall, purple, yellow, red, white and blue blooms are poking through the sand in the park's northern sections, said Michael Rodriques, interpreter and visitor center manager.

"You're seeing a lot of dune evening primrose, sand verbena, brown eyed primrose, spectacle pod and desert lily," Rodriques said. "And we're just starting to see some desert sunflowers, although they haven't gotten really hot and heavy yet."

This year's burst of color comes on the heels of two straight duds; blooms were scarce in 2006 and 2007.

"We are having a pretty nice bloom," Rodriques said. "Now, will it be as pretty as '05? Probably not. We would call it a good year, not a great year."

Colorado Springs is a wildfire disaster waiting to happen, so federal officials are giving the city $1 million to make sure it doesn’t.

Foothills neighborhoods from Peregrine to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo will share the windfall, which will be used to clear more than 500 acres of potential wildfire fuel.

Residents will see the money in action in a few weeks as crews with chain saws and chippers fan out to start “limbing” trees, removing dead scrub oak and cutting brush.

The crews will be following up on work started by homeowners, whose sweat equity was key to persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award the Springs its third consecutive “pre-disaster mitigation grant.”

“This was the only grant awarded in the nation to address wildland risk,” said Christina Randall, the Colorado Springs Fire Department wildland risk manager.

“Typically, these grants go for flood control, landslide and slope movement, tornado shelters,” she said.

The Springs won again because the Fire Department has been aggressive through its FireWise program, which educates people about wildfire risks through the use of a mobile trailer, educational talks and a risk-rating Web site.

FireWise has persuaded dozens of neighborhood groups to get busy on common areas and individuals to reduce the risk on their own properties.

“FEMA really loves that,” Randall said, noting that the grants require matching funds from the community either in hard dollars or volunteer hours.

“They like to see the community involved — not just waiting for government to come in and fix a problem,” she said. “These projects rely on residents stepping up and doing the work.”

Lewis lives in Cedar Heights, a gated neighborhood of about 200 luxury homes above the Garden of the Gods on the city’s far west edge.

For years, he has coordinated efforts to get his neighbors to create defensible space around their homes in the heavily wooded neighborhood.

Lewis has preached the FireWise gospel of removing brush and dead trees to eliminate fuel. And he cites chapter and verse of the need to trim the lower limbs of trees to prevent the “ladder effect” in which a wildfire climbs a tree and gets into the forest canopy.

“This community has done a tremendous job,” Lewis said of his Cedar Heights neighbors. “Now, it’s paying off with the FEMA grant.”

Lewis said that in 2006, Cedar Heights residents spent more than 1,000 hours clearing their lots and common areas. And they invested about $27,000 on fire mitigation.

Last year, the neighborhood spent nearly $115,000 on more sophisticated measures, such as converting cedar shake roofs to more fire-resistant materials and converting wood siding to stucco.

All those efforts were added up by Randall to reach the needed matching contribution without using tax dollars.

“That’s what is so incredible about this grant,” she said. “We did it all with matching commitments.”

Most people wouldn't leave an open bucket of gasoline next to their fireplace, but many often don't think about having a pile of fuel next to their home in the form of vegetation.

Calli-Jane Burch, executive director of the Butte County Fire Safe Council, is working to get together with residents to explain the importance of building defensible space around their home.

Through the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, the Fire Safe Council has become partners with Cal Fire-Butte County, Butte County, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and PG&E, to get the word out.

People may think wildfires are walls of flames sweeping through an area burning everything in its path. More often, devastating losses occur when embers from nearby fires settle into vegetation around people's homes, rain gutters and under decks, which grow larger and destroy homes.

Burch said documentation in the works will be used for federal agencies in decisions regarding the funneling of money to Butte County for fire prevention.

The county, for example, operates a free brush-chipping program. Residents can haul their brush to a place easily accessible for the chipping equipment.

Yankee Hill, another example, needs water towers and a fire break. The community also needs to prioritize how they want to accomplish a fire plan.

On an individual basis, people should clear a space within 100 feet of their homes, with a concentration on rain gutters, to make sure embers from nearby fires do not cause damage to their home.

Other homeowners should pay attention to foliage that creates a ladder effect that allows fires to spread upward and outward.

Some space is also needed for fuel breaks, or areas cleared of vegetation, to keep fires from spreading.

Burch said residents have between now and June to give comments on the Wildfire Protection Plan, which is available for view at buttefiresafe.org. For more information call 877-0984.

With forecasts calling for drought to persist or worsen in western South Dakota, the outlook is growing grim for the 2008 fire season, the area's top two firefighters say.

"Right now, the scientific factors are pointing to another challenging fire season," Joe Lowe, coordinator of the South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression Division said.

Lowe attended a meeting in Pierre last week with other fire officials and weather experts, who said the region likely will see warmer-than-average temperatures and lower-than-average precipitation from March through May.

The U.S. Drought Monitor earlier this winter had indicated some improvement for the region, but last week, it changed its forecast and now predicts that drought will persist or intensify for most of the western third of the state.

The western Black Hills is right on the line between an area to the west slated for some improvement in drought conditions and an area to the east where drought is expected to persist or intensify.

"I'm always inclined to be more of a pessimist," said Todd Pechota, fire-management officer for the Black Hills National Forest. Pechota said he is assuming the drought will persist. "With that in mind, the Black Hills National Forest will continue to prepare and be ready for an active fire season once again."

He said the snow pack is generally good over the Northern Hills but sparse over the central and southern Black Hills. "We definitely could use a bunch more snow," Pechota said.

Lowe said the sparse snow pack could lead to earlier snow melts, faster drying at higher elevations and fires earlier in the season.

According to Lowe, state fire meteorologist Randall Benson said the data indicate a fire season this year that could approach that of 2000, when more than a quarter-million acres burned in the state. That year included the 83,500-acre Jasper Fire.

This year, Lowe said he will recommend contracting for at least three single engine air tankers, commonly called SEATs.

He said the division this summer will have only one heavy helicopter available from the South Dakota National Guard. That is down from as many as four heavy helicopters from the Guard in past years, Lowe said. "We've depended heavily on the National Guard for type 1 helicopters," he said. "That's no longer the case because of deployments."

Pechota said the Black Hills National Forest will have the same amount of resources as it did last year, with one light helicopter, capable of carrying about 150 gallons of water; one heavy helicopter that can carry up to 1,000 gallons; 18 fire engines; three 10-member hand crews; the interagency Tatanka Hot Shot crew; and two bulldozers.

Also, the Forest Service is trying to reduce the amount of wildfire fuel in the forest through its annual prescribed burning program, Pechota said.

"We're about 7,000 or 8,000 acres into it for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1," Pechota said. "If we get a good spring with more moisture, we can get another couple thousand acres done."

The state's hand crews also work throughout the year to thin out trees and brush that could provide fuel for wildfire, according to Ryan Ricke, fuels specialist for the fire division.

This week, members of the Bear Mountain and Black Hat crews were thinning trees and brush on 40 acres of National Guard property on the west edge of Rapid City.

Lowe said the state drought task force will reassess the drought situation in April. "We will continue to follow the trends, but we are starting to make provisions for a busy fire season."

Lowe said he is concerned about the ever-tightening competition for fire resources as fires nationally continue to become bigger and hotter.

A government report earlier this month said Forest Service air tankers used to fight Western wildfires are potentially vulnerable to accidents. The agency owns 26 aircraft and leases 771 aircraft for firefighting. The Forest Service will require stricter inspections and maintenance on its leased aircraft.

Lowe said he didn't know if it will become more difficult to get additional air tankers here. But, he said, "Anytime that we lose any of the tools out of the wildland fire toolbox in extreme fire conditions, that puts a strain on things."

He also said it could become more difficult to hire the SEATs planes in the future. Pilots are finding it more lucrative to go back to crop-spraying operations, Lowe said.

He said his division's budget has been maintained. The division currently has 17 fire engines, two hand crews and a batch of equipment that includes eight command trailers, a mobile kitchen and a mobile supply cache.

Lowe said the average fire season nationally has grown by 78 days over the past 15 years.

"We're starting to see mega-fires that change the forest landscape to where it won't come back in our lifetime," Lowe said.

With tightening resources and dangerous fire seasons, it becomes even more important for agencies to work together, Lowe said.

He said the state, the Forest Service and local fire departments are doing just that.

"Fortunately for the taxpayers of South Dakota, there's a synergy," Lowe said. "All the partners are walking lock-step together to face these challenges."

Just before dawn last week, a red ball of fire streaked across Northwestern skies and exploded midair. The spectacular meteor sent residents in several states running for their phones to report possible forest fires.

Although the land is still blanketed in snow with temperatures below freezing, Westerners are conditioned to expect fire. And by July, their expectations will be met as forest fires roar through their states. Some hoped President Bush's new budget would provide answers to this growing problem, but as usual, little has changed for the Forest Service.

Once again, the majority of the funding will go to wildland fire management and emergency fire suppression. Until budgets effectively address the causes of the fire problem - fuels accumulations and the ever-expanding wildland-urban interface - catastrophic wildfires will continue to ravage both forestlands and nearby communities.

In recent years, the Forest Service's budget for wildland fire management has averaged $1.5 billion a year. But each year, the Forest Service spends all of that budgeted money and then borrows from other programs, like research and restoration, to cover additional firefighting expenses.

After fire season, Congress relies on "emergency supplements" to reimburse the agency about $500 million annually. In effect, there is no budget for fire management; the more money the Forest Service spends, the larger the reimbursement.

For comparison, consider a private timber company that owns forestland and harvests timber. In the event of a wildfire, the company will divert funds to protect its timber.

The losses from fire and the diversion of funds from other valued activities directly impact the bottom line, even if insurance covers some of the losses. The need to preserve profits provides the company with a strong incentive to manage its forests to reduce the risk of damaging wildfires.

The Forest Service is by no means a timber company, and this example is not meant to suggest that it should be managed as one. But, the agency would reap significant benefits if it had incentives to prevent emergency situations.

Budgets should reward managers who address the fire problem before it blows up, rather than reward them when fires burn out of control. For example, in the wildland-urban interface, where wildfire poses great risk to communities, managers should focus on fuels reduction and preparedness.

In more remote areas, managers may choose to allow some wildfires to burn, if they pose no threat to people or property. This approach would have the dual benefit of reducing hazardous fuels accumulations and restoring fire to its historical role in forest ecosystems in these remote areas.

Taking a lesson from private industry, the first step would be to limit federal fire funding to appropriations. Without the cushion of emergency funding, managers will be forced to stay within appropriated budgets.

In addition, cost control would become a higher priority if budgets were strictly followed. Each national forest should be allowed to carry forward any unspent fire funds from one year to the next. Retaining the surplus at the forest level - not the regional or agency level - would encourage management suited to local conditions.

Finally, to prepare for predictable disasters, national forests could have some form of fire insurance, either provided by the government or the private sector. Just like private insurance, each forest would pay a premium from its appropriated budget, and could place claims during years when they face costly catastrophic fires.

Premiums would be adjusted accordingly, so that forests that consistently overspend would pay more toward insurance each year, while forests that stay within their budget would pay less.

The wildland fire problem will not be solved simply by throwing more money at the flames. Instead, new policies should provide incentives for cost control and emergency prevention. With this approach, there is hope that our tax dollars will not go up in smoke.

ALISON BERRY is a research fellow at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center.

FUSEE is a non-profit organization dedicated to public education on fire ecology and management issues. We believe this news service to be 'Fair Use' of the cited copyrighted material for educational purposes and will advance awareness, understanding, and public discussion of issues relating to firefighter safety, ethical land management, environmental protection, ecological restoration, and other issues in the public interest.