Veterans Community Response members volunteer, thinning forest land

Members of the Veterans Community Response organization are spending some of their days clearing and thinning forest land, helping make it harder for wildfires to take hold and cause severe damage.

A recent project was thinning 18 acres owned by an elderly couple who couldn’t do the work themselves, said Director of Response Darrell Loeffler. “This place was so overgrown,” he said. “There were places you couldn’t walk through because there was a tree every inch.”

Much of the property was crowded by thick stands of small trees with trunks smaller than an inch wide. That many trees compete for nutrients, water and sunlight and aren’t healthy, Loeffler said. They also provide an easy way for flames to climb up into the branches of older, larger trees nearby.

“You lose not only the little trees, but the big, healthy trees right next to them,” he said.

The work the group does has not changed since the coronavirus pandemic began, but how they do it has. People no longer carpool to work sites, and bring sack lunches instead of meeting at a restaurant for lunch. They practice social distancing and many wear masks.

“Besides COVID-19, there’s a lot of pollen and (stuff) falling out of the trees,” Loeffler said.

Despite the new challenges, the work is getting done. Loeffler is proud of the transformation he and his crew made to the elderly couple’s property. “You couldn’t even see sunlight on the forest floor,” he said. “Now it looks like a park.”

The wildfire fuel reduction work is scheduled through the end of June. It’s work that can only be done when the risk of fire is low.

“We follow the industrial fire safety code,” Loeffler said. “We do an hour fire safety watch after we run our saws.”

There are usually crews working no more than three days a week. “It is hard work,” he said. “That’s to protect those guys, so they’re not getting tired or injured.”

Veterans Community Response has been doing the thinning and clearing work for the past three years, Loeffler said. It gets veterans together with other veterans, and also provides meaningful work for them to do that helps the community.

“We’re trying to bring up a constructive way to help our community,” he said.

Loeffler knows what it’s like to need a purpose. He served a tour in Iraq in the Marine Corps, where he was shot in the hand and lost a finger. He was medically discharged in 2006. “After that, I was floating around with not a lot of purpose,” he said.

He moved to the Spokane area and visited the Veterans Center, where he heard about Veterans Community Response. He signed up immediately. “This organization has given me a sense of purpose,” he said. “It has worked out. It’s been pretty awesome.”

At the time many of the group’s leaders had full-time jobs, so Loeffler found himself stepping up to fill more important roles, like team leader and then director of response. He’s also a board member. “I think it was just one of those things that evolved over time,” he said. “I’m retired, and I basically had the time to put into that.”

Wildfire fuel reduction is just one of the things Veterans Community Response does. The group, which started out as Beyond the Yellow Ribbon, also puts on retreats for veterans and does community service and disaster response work. That work happens locally as well as around the country.

“We send vets out partnering with All Hands and Hearts, to help out after natural disasters,” he said.

The work Loeffler and his crews do helps fund those other efforts. The Department of Natural Resources has a Fuel Reduction Cost Share Program available to property owners that pays half the cost to have properties thinned and cleaned up, reducing the risk of wildfires. The projects Veterans Community Response takes on are usually a part of that program, and the money the crew is paid goes to funding veteran retreats, Loeffler said. The retreats are on hold because of the pandemic, but the organization hopes to resume them later this year.

Loeffler said he’s always looking for veterans who want to be involved in helping their community. The organization provides training in handling chain saws, but there are other jobs as well. “We have jobs that don’t require chain-saw skills,” he said. “We’re hoping to recruit more people.”

Veterans interested in joining the organization can find out more information at vetcomres.org or (509) 730-9413.