U.S. Officials Anticipate Another Bad Fire Season

The parachutes were packed, the plane was ready for takeoff, and the smokejumpers wanted to soar.

Ironically, April rain and the overcast skies that brought it grounded the elite crew of firefighters, delaying a training run for what is shaping up as another disastrous wildfire season in the West.

The 400 smokejumpers nationwide are the country’s first line of defense against forest and range fires. After the explosive summer and fall of 2000, the government is beefing up the corps, adding to their numbers and providing them with sophisticated new equipment.

Last year fires raced across the West, charring 7 million acres and destroying hundreds of houses in nine states. Idaho saw 1.3 million acres burn, but building destruction was limited. In Montana, flames covered 1 million acres in the Bitterroot Valley, claiming 70 homes. More than 600,000 acres burned in the Southwest last summer, destroying hundreds of homes.

A record $1.6 billion was spent to fight fires nationwide in 2000, prompting an unprecedented budget increase for firefighters, equipment, thinning projects and community education.

Now, as winter snows in the West begin to melt, close to 40 million acres there are considered at risk of catastrophic fires this summer because of the buildup of fuels during decades of fire suppression.

And drought conditions have only aggravated the amount of combustible fuels and underbrush in the back country, Jack Sept of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise said. That’s giving scientists a good idea of what to expect in the coming months.

“With these indicators we’re able to make some assumptions,” Sept said. “The bottom line is that the fire season will be like last year.”

In the aftermath of last year’s disaster, Congress approved a $1.8-billion National Fire Plan to reduce fire hazards this year. Throughout the country, much of the money is being used to hire 8,000 full- and part-time workers--mainly firefighters. In addition to more smokejumpers, a dozen more elite hotshot crews are in the mix.

The cash infusion also means dozens of newly contracted helicopters, more than 400 new fire engines, 28 bulldozers, 15 tractor plows and 32 water tankers. The Great Basin Smokejumpers, an elite cadre of 65 that trains here and was scheduled to make the training jump, is being expanded to 85 this season.

Normally the fire season starts in Florida, then moves westward and into the Great Basin--Utah, Nevada, southern Idaho and western Wyoming--before igniting the Pacific Northwest and California in the fall.

With dry conditions dating back to 1998 in much of the West, Neil Hitchcock at the NIFC expects Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and the Sierra Nevada of central California to get hit hard again by wildfires this year.

A major lesson being carried into the back country this year from last year’s battles is simple, Hitchcock said.

“Protecting an acre of ground is not worth a life,” he said.

But smokejumper training supervisor Ken Franz said firefighters have always had a healthy respect for the risk.

“When you see 1,000 acres of timber go up in flames, you get an incredible respect for Mother Nature,” he said.

Training is critical, so when the Idaho training flight was grounded, Richie Campas, a second-year member of the Great Basin Smokejumpers, strapped into a parachute flight simulator, part of new equipment paid for through the emergency wildfire package.

A virtual-reality headset covered his eyes and ears and he watched a 3-D jump scene. Wearing a padded yellow Kevlar jumpsuit, feet dangling, his hands pulled two toggles to direct the imaginary parachute to a safe landing near the virtual fire.

“It’s as close as you can get to the real thing,” he said.

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On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center:https://www.nifc.gov