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Fire prevention really begins at home

Ed Levert | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 years, 4 months AGO
by Ed Levert
| October 8, 2013 5:45 PM

Well, we survived another fire season, mostly through timely rains and the efforts of our county firefighters.  

We really haven’t had a severe fire season in Lincoln County since 2000, when fires burned more than 45,000 acres. Did you know that the Headwaters Economic Group in Bozeman rated Lincoln County as having the second highest fire-risk in Montana based on the number of homes and acres in the Wildland Urban Interface?  How much longer can our good luck hold?  

Every summer I cringe when I think about how a wildfire might affect Lincoln County. One fire in the Flower Creek Municipal Watershed could produce enough ash to shut down Libby’s water system. The 2007 Parmenter Fire had the potential to wreak havoc in Libby, but thanks to favorable winds and an intensive firefighting attack, the fire was suppressed with little damage.  How often can we count on having firefighting crews, retardant planes and water dropping helicopters available? During a bad fire season fire crews may not be available or if we have high winds, retardant planes and helicopters may not be able to fly or even be available.

So, what can we do?  Well, we have already done a lot in the past 10 years. The Forest Service and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservatoin have treated the fuels in critical areas around the county. These treated areas give firefighters a real advantage in stopping an oncoming fire.  

Many properties in the county have been treated with cost-share grant funding. The Lincoln County FireSafe Council is constantly looking at ideas to help reduce our fire danger. The Lincoln County Community Wildfire Protection Plan has been recently updated.  Libby, Em Kayan Village and Chain of Lakes are recognized as FireWise Communities.

Is all of this enough?  No, when you look at the amount of vegetation in our county and all of the homes spread out across the landscape it is apparent that we are at grave risk.   

I am fairly comfortable with the efforts of the Forest Service and DNRC to continue to reduce the risks on their lands within the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), although still more remains to be done.

However, it is the private ownership that I worry about. Our residents need to take more responsibility for reducing their fire hazard.  Do we really think that firefighters are going to be able to save a home if the owner has not already done preventive work around their home?  

The Libby Rural Fire Department is one of the best, but I would doubt that it has the capacity to handle more than a couple of houses during a major fire. Besides, we don’t believe that firefighters should be putting their lives on the line to save property where the landowner didn’t create a safe environment in the first place.

First, homeowners must take care of the little things around their homes like that stack of firewood next to the house or needles in the gutters, because sparks are going to be the big problem in the advance of the wildfire. Next they need to reduce the fuels near their house.  

There are lots of guides to help them with their efforts including fuel reduction grants that may pay 50 percent to 75 percent of the cost of the work.  All of this information is available online at www.lcfiresafe.org or call 293-2847 for more information.  

Now is the time to start thinking about what the 2014 fire season might bring and to do something to prepare for it.

(Ed Levert is the Lincoln County Forester.)

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ARTICLES BY ED LEVERT

April 24, 2018 4 a.m.

Learn to appreciate other points of view

Many of you are aware of the collaborative group called the Kootenai Forest Stakeholder Coalition (KFSC), a diverse group of area citizens and groups that came together to find common ground on a diverse number of natural resource issues. It all began back in 2006, when the KFSC was born. Many of our founding group thought that this was just an opportunity to help the forest sell more timber and bring back a sawmill to Libby. But it didn’t take long before we found that there were widely varying objectives in our group. Not everyone thought that cutting more timber was the most important resource out there and some thought that cutting no trees was all right.

September 1, 2017 4 a.m.

Fire-wise citizens crucial to fighting wildfires

It is somewhat amazing when I look at a map of Montana fires that Lincoln County has remained relatively unscathed. Yes, we have had some pretty significant fires (Gibralter for one), but (knock on wood) no loss of life or structures. This isn’t just a result of good luck, but because of the professional responses by our firemen, sheriff’s office and county disaster and emergency services.

January 16, 2015 7:43 a.m.

Cooperation, not litigation, is best for everyone

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