Opinion
The 15,323-acre Dixie Fire just east of Dixie, Idaho is not being completely suppressed by the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest. A Type 1 Incident Management Team and over 500 personnel will be tied up for an extended amount of time on that incident with their time spent as follows — 15% monitoring, 30% confining, 35% point protecting, and 20% suppressing the fire. Resources assigned include 8 hand crews, 16 fire engines, and 4 helicopters for a total of 522 personnel. The same team is managing the nearby 898-acre Jumbo Fire. (map)
Other fires in the Northern Rockies Geographic Area that are less than full suppression on July 12, 2021 include:
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- Trestle Creek Complex, Idaho
- Jumbo, Idaho
- Storm Creek, Idaho
- Shotgun, Idaho
- Goose, Montana
- Trail Creek, Montana
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The forecast for wildland fire potential issued July 1 by the National Interagency Fire Center predicts that California and virtually the entire northwest one-quarter of the United States will have above normal fire potential in July and August. So far that is proving to be true.
It is mid-July, the traditional time for the beginning of the busiest time of the Western fire season. The nation is at Preparedness Level 4, Level 5 is the highest, and resources are already being rationed among 50 large uncontained wildfires. More than 12,000 fire personnel are actively suppressing most of them. Many requests by Incident Commanders for additional personnel and other resources are being UTF’ed, Unable to Fill.
Part of the problem is that the U.S. Forest Service and some of the other Federal land management agencies have hundreds of vacant firefighting positions due to difficulties in hiring and retaining firefighters, who are labeled “Forestry Technicians”. This can be attributed to ridiculously low pay, very frequent travel, miserable working conditions, sexual harassment, a crippled hiring process, and poor benefits.
The Snake River Complex and the Dry Gulch Fire not far away in Idaho and Washington have a combined 109,457 acres and no helicopters. Do we have the luxury of hoarding a Type 1 IMT, over 500 personnel, and 4 helicopters while the U.S. Forest Service babysits a fire all summer? How are they going to explain their decisions to the downwind residents who might be exposed to smoke for months?
As a member of an interagency incident management team that specialized in less than full suppression wildfires, I learned that it is extremely difficult to allow a wildfire to successfully burn for weeks or months with little or no suppression. It requires highly skilled and long-experienced firefighters in key positions to make it work. Another ingredient that is necessary, which can’t be entered on a Resource Request, is luck. All it takes is one or two days of very strong winds and you can find yourself in a nightmare scenario. A less than full suppression fire which goes on for months will probably encounter a wind event. After the fire quadruples in size, changing the strategy to suppression is not a situation an Agency Administrator wants to find themselves in.
Selecting this strategy at the beginning of the fire season is, to put it bluntly in clear text, stupid. Especially when the fuels are extremely dry in early July and the summer looks like it could be full of fire. It would make more sense a month before the average date of a Season Ending Event brought on by heavy rain or snow.
The National and Regional Multi-Agency Coordinating Groups need to be proactive in moving and assigning fire suppression resources where they can be most effective. They can also make use of a rarely used tool, Area Command Teams. The national and regional fire staff of the agencies also need to inject some common sense into what we are seeing at the beginning of this summer. If they do not have enough funding to support their fire organizations and provide homeland security at the levels needed in this decade, they need to have the COURAGE to speak truth to power. Congress needs to take action.
While they can be constructive, there have been enough strongly worded letters, committee hearings, and discussions about legislation. It’s time to sh*t or get off the pot.