National forest land fires rage unchecked

The supervisor of the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest said Thursday there is no recent precedent for the more than 130 fires burning an estimated 80,000 acres on the 4 million-acre forest.

"What we have here on the forest is a pretty unprecedented level of fire activity at least in anybody's memory who has worked here," said Cheryl Probert, who took the reins of the forest late last year.

It's the number of fires on the forest combined with the extremely dry conditions - on top of scarce availability of firefighting resources - that is so unusual, she said.

The fires came fast and furious from thunderstorms Aug. 9 and 10 that tossed hundreds of lightning bolts in tinder-try forests and grasslands from the Camas Prairie to Powell. As providence would have it, many of those bolts landed near rural communities like Kamiah, Craigmont and Syringa, outside the forest boundary.

Because of the threat to lives, homes and private property, the forest's firefighting infrastructure was dispatched to battle side by side with the Idaho Department of Lands and rural fire departments in an effort to save homes and protect lives. But some of that effort proved futile when Mother Nature delivered a nasty cold front with strong and gusty winds that transformed the hundreds of fires into infernos that torched many homes and continue to threaten others.

The effort to slow the flames, protect life and property, meant many fires in remote areas of the forest have yet to receive attention from boots-on-the-ground firefighters. But that is slowly starting to change as firefighters incrementally gain ground on some of the blazes burning on and around private property.

Probert said fire managers on and off of the forest are triaging the blazes based on the level of threat they pose. She said fires close to communities and private property continue to garner most of the resources. Next up are fires burning in the roaded areas of the forest.

"We are trying with what few initial attack resources we have to keep those in check so they don't get any bigger or they don't burn structures (like lookout towers)," she said. "Then we have wilderness and backcountry fires that all we are doing is monitoring and trying to get out in front of them with closures and structure protection on our pack bridges, our cabins and our lookouts."

There are three Type 1 incident management teams in the Clearwater basin - one managing firefighting efforts on the Clearwater Complex and the Jay Point Fire, another taking on some of the fires near Syringa and Lowell, and another overseeing efforts to suppress the Wash and Baldy fires on the Selway River and near Elk City and Newsome.

Because of the complexity of the fires burning over a large geographic area, the forest has also brought on an area command team that helps coordinate efforts and resources between the incident management teams.

"What area command does is look at that bigger picture strategically and prioritize resources across all of those teams," she said. "Each incident management team is still managing their fires, but area command looks at the bigger picture. They are more strategic in their approach."

The fires and dry conditions have prompted forest officials to close large chunks of ground and several campgrounds, roads and trails. The latest information on closed areas is available on the Web at http://j.mp/1hjiQid.

Probert said the decision to close areas, trails and roads is not taken lightly.

"We look at those from the aspect of where the fires are that we know of and what the expected behavior is in the future, and really with the goal of keeping the public safe and allowing our firefighting activities to occur and keeping our firefighters safe," she said. "We know those have economic and social implications. We take all of those decisions very seriously."

The fires are also gobbling up time and employee emphasis that would otherwise be devoted to a wide range of work including preparing future timber sales, restoring degraded watersheds and managing recreation infrastructure like trails and campgrounds.

"We pretty much have probably 90 percent or even more of our folks supporting the fire effort," she said.

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Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.