News on Youtube Oct 1 2018

(Forest sounds)

(Narrator): The McLeod Fire was started by lightning August 11th and grew to over

4,000 acres by August 16th.

The fire was in position to move rapidly down the Eight Mile Creek drainage toward the community of Winthrop, Washington.

(Tim Delph): When it reached our fuels treatment here fire behavior dropped off precipitously.

I'm Tim Delph, I'm Fuels AFMO here in the Methow Valley Ranger District in the Okanagan-Wenatchee.

Behind me we have the, where the McLeod Fire came down into the 8-Mile drainage and ran into our fuels treatments.

(Narrator) Since 2004 over

2700 acres in this area had been treated with a combination of commercial thinning, ladder fuels reduction and

prescribed fire.

(Aana Kulaas) And by having these treated areas

It really gives us a good place where we can actually attack the fire.

My name is Aana Kulaas

I'm a Fuels Technician on the Methow Valley Ranger District.

(Tim Delph) The way we've approached the fuels treatments for the last

15 years or so has been to look at strategic areas where it makes a lot of sense to have open forests.

For example with the McLeod Fire and these fuel treatments in the 8-Mile drainage. We were able to

fall back to this and say: this is a place where we can hold the fire and this is a place where you can actually

take action and get firefighters in safely, and be successful.

(Chad Bresnahan): We held the fire on the Eight Mile Road as it basically backed down to the road.

(Aana Kulaas) It gave firefighters good points to access the fire and to

build their containment lines off of them.

(Chad Bresnahan) And do it with limiting the exposure to our firefighters also.

So it was very, very effective.

I'm Chad Bresnahan.

I'm the detailed in the Assistant Fire Management Officer position here on the Methow Valley Ranger District.

(Aana Kulaas) Another good benefit is in a treated area that we can actually do

burnouts and that allows us to control the fire as it enters that area.

(Narrator): Burnouts are conducted by firefighters to deprive an approaching wildfire of fuel.

And burnouts conducted in treated areas can lead to a shorter, less costly wildfire,

requiring fewer firefighting resources.

(Chad Bresnahan): If we can keep something smaller,

it'll be maybe five hundred or a hundred people working that fire versus a couple thousand.

(Tim Delph): So typically to do a prescribed burn cost us around $100 an acre to implement a prescribed burn.

So compared to the cost of a wildfire that's significantly lower.

(Narrator) Commercial and small tree thinning and firewood gathering all help in reducing hazardous fuels

but for a safer, healthy forest, fire needs to be part of the equation.

And prescribed fire will mean some smoke.

(Aana Kulaas) Nobody likes breathing smoke, especially after long summers of breathing smoke.

I don't like breathing the smoke but the benefit to prescribed fire smoke is that we can control the duration typically.

So you're looking at maybe a couple days of smoke compared to maybe weeks and weeks of smoke in the summer.

(Narrator): In 2018, Methow Valley communities saw up to 30 days of unhealthy air due to wildfire smoke,

but only one because of prescribed fires conducted in the spring of that year.

(Aana Kulaas): I think one thing that people have frustrations with is we've been doing

hazardous fuel treatments, including prescribed fire, and putting up smoke for for several years

and we're still having these summers full of smoke.

And that's just because we're so far behind the curve in terms of bringing fire back to the landscape.

(Narrator): The McLeod fire is just the latest example of how fuels treatments can protect communities and other resources like wildlife habitat,

watersheds, and timber.

More fuels projects are being planned across the Okanagan-Wenatchee National Forest,

but, after almost 100 years of putting out all fires, it will take decades of work.

We need everyone to commit to the idea that we are in a partnership

working towards the greatest good.

And that each prescribed fire today is not just protecting our properties and our livelihoods,

but is also one more step towards restoring forest health for our children and our grandchildren.