Montana residents urged to prepare for fire season

All residents throughout Montana are encouraged to participate in Wildfire Awareness Month this May. The purpose is to raise awareness about wildland fire safety, community preparedness, hazardous fuels mitigation, and fire prevention.

Residents in areas with a potential for wildfires can impact the risk and severity of wildfires and reduce deaths, injuries and property losses through their preparedness efforts. Proactive actions from a single individual, or entire neighborhood, contribute to a safer community when wildfires happen.

Become a local champion through committing a couple of hours or an entire day to improving your property’s defensibility and resiliency.

Here are a few ways to prevent and prepare for wildfires:

- Clean out gutters, roofs and other areas where debris has settled

- Avoid burning on windy days and never leave a burn pile unattended

- Maintain equipment to reduce sparks and check that trailer chains do not drag

- Create an evacuation plan and practice the route with family members

- Practice campfire safety by ensuring your fire is dead out before leaving the campsite

- Keep the space around your home clear of very dense vegetation

- Help your community by organizing a wildfire preparedness event

The solution to Montana’s wildfire situation is to create communities that can survive wildfire. Montana must learn to live with fire. Based on recent history and experience, Montana possesses all of the characteristics necessary to support large, intense, and uncontrollable wildfires.

Within this hazardous environment are individual houses, subdivisions, and entire communities. Many homes, however, are ill-prepared to survive an intense wildfire. It is not a question of “if” a wildfire will occur but when. As such, the potential of losing human lives and properties are growing. Our ability to live more safely in this fire environment depends on pre-fire activities. These are actions taken before a wildfire occurs that improve the survivability of human lives and homes. It is important to remember that there are no guarantees when wildfires meet extreme conditions.

The look of our Montana forests has changed dramatically in the last several decades. In many instances, trees are far more numerous. This change has led to destructive fires in recent years. The buildup of fuel coupled with recent insect and disease outbreaks has greatly increased potential for severe wildfires. Climatic factors such as drought and warmer temperatures also play a role.

Wildland fires are an integral part of many ecosystems throughout Montana. These ecosystems often exhibit adaptations to recurring fire. Lightning, volcanoes, and aboriginal people sustained a continuing interaction between wildland fires and ecosystems over millennia.

Periodic forest, shrubland, and grassland fires are part of our natural environment—as natural and vital as rain, snow, or wind. Evidence of past fires and their periodicity is found in charcoal layers in lakes and bogs; and in the fire-scarred cross sections of trees.

Fire-adapted ecosystems in Montana are termed fire-dependent: recurring fire disturbances are essential to their functioning. Numerous examples have been documented on how fire affects the functioning of ecosystems: regulating plant succession; regulating fuel accumulations; controlling age, structure, and species composition of vegetation; affecting insect and disease populations; influencing energy cycles and energy flows; and determining habitats for wildlife.

The plants and animals we enjoy in Montana generally are present because of past fires, not because we have tried to exclude fire. Plants and animals have adapted to their fire environment in a compatible manner. The question for us is simply this: Can people who live in the interface do the same?

Many people assume that when a wildfire starts, it will be quickly controlled and extinguished. This is an accurate assumption 97 percent of the time. For most wildfires,

firefighters have the ability, equipment, and technology for effective fire suppression. Three percent of the time, wildfires burn so intensely that there is little firefighters can do. Even airtankers and helicopters cannot be expected to save every home in these cases.

Here are some tips for protecting homes during fire season:

- Use low growing herbaceous (non-woody) or succulent plants near structures. Herbaceous plants include succulent ground covers such as ice plant, bedding plants, bulbs, and perennial flowers.

- Use non-flammable mulches, rock and non-combustible hard surfaces (concrete sidewalks, brick patios, pavers, and asphalt driveways). Break up continuity of vegetation with hardscape features such as decorative rock, gravel and stepping-stones to slow the spread of fire.

- Space deciduous ornamental trees and shrubs as individual plantings or as groups of plants. The plants nearest to structures should be more widely spaced and smaller than those farther away. Use small, irregular clusters, and islands, not large masses.

- Most wildland shrubs and trees should be removed from this

area and replaced with the above practices.

- Minimize the use of fire-prone and resinous shrubs and trees (such as juniper, big sagebrush, and pine) and tall grasses.

- Tree limbs within 15 feet of a chimney, encroaching on power lines, or touching the house should be removed.

- Keep plants free of dead leaves, branches, and ladder fuels.

- Check with your homeowners’ association or community to see if permits are required to carry out any of the above actions. If codes interfere with fire protection, they should be updated.