One year later, fire still haunts Chippy Creek

It has just been a little over a year since the Chippy Creek fire burned nearly 100,000 acres. Since that time the U.S. Forest Service has been working to see what they can do to help the area that was ravaged by the fire.

Between cost of control and damages, the fire cost about $20 million dollars. Plains Ranger District Fire Supervisor Randy Hojem said it was a small dollar amount considering how much acreage was burned.

“It’s a lot of money, but it really isn’t that much when you consider how much actually burned and the huge effort we had to contain it,” he said.

Hojem said that last summer was a pretty significant fire season for Sanders County, however the only fire that got out of control was the Chippy Creek fire.

“We had 150 fires, 100 of those were by July 20,” he said. “We caught 149 of them, unfortunately the one we didn’t catch got pretty big.”

Hojem said that they had the most equipment they have ever had on a fire on the Chippy Creek fire.

“We’ve never had that much equipment on a fire around here before,” he said.

However, Hojem said that they really didn’t have many crews on the fire. “We had some difficulty finding 20-person crews,” he said.

With a fire of that magnitude, there are still some outstanding issues that the Forest Service is dealing with.

The Forest Service applied for a request through Congress for a Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) grant. They received $500,000 for it and the money is being used on roads, trails and stream crossings.

Another way the Forest Service has been able to receive money for clean-up efforts is through mushroom picking permits. According to Hojem, the Plains Ranger Station issued 684 commercial permits and 37 personal permits this past summer. The money is in an account and can’t be used until next year, but Hojem said the number was substantial.

The Forest Service is also hoping to start planting in the area within the next few months, Hojem added. They will plant about 3,000 acres in the area and then 2,000 acres outside of units. They will also plant a five acre white bark pine orchard, because white bark pine is something they want to see more of in the area, he said.

One of the issues the Forest Service has encountered while trying to recover the Chippy Creek area is the fact that a lot of the area is roadless. Courts have ruled that timber can’t be salvaged from roadless forests.

A total of 47,500 National Forest System acres burned in the Chippy Creek fire. The Forest Service plans to harvest 1,527 acres, although Hojem said that number will probably be a little smaller.

“Once we get up there we may find out that some of it is just pulp and can’t be harvested, so that acreage will probably drop some,” he said.

Hojem said they hope to begin logging in December, if everything goes correctly according to their timeline.

Their Environmental Assessment (EA) was sent out on Monday Sept. 22 and a 30-day comment period will follow. After those 30 days they hope to have a decision made by the end of October or early November. During this time they’re going to request Emergency Situation Determination, which would allow them to make deals before the appeals are decided on, and they hope to possibly sell by mid-to-late November and then start logging in December with the winter harvest.