Keeping the flames at bay when there’s just one way out in a wildfire

Darren Higashiyama gets paid to dwell on worst-case scenarios.

This time of year, when lightning flashes over tinder-dry forests and canyons dotted with cabins and campgrounds, the thought of a blocked wildfire evacuation route can keep him up at night.

“All you need is one jack-knifed trailer and it screws up everything,” Higashiyama, emergency management coordinator for the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview from Ellensburg, Washington.

“We are in a fire-prone area,” he added. “We have dodged a lot of bullets, but luck is not a plan.”

With this in mind, Kittitas County has embarked on a noteworthy, federally-funded project to thin forests and clear brush along two-lane roads in the Cle Elum, Roslyn and Suncadia area that would be the only escape routes for rural homeowners, hikers and campers were another big wildfire to break out nearby.

Several other Pacific Northwest counties also won competitive federal grants to systematically “harden” wildfire evacuation routes.

The U.S. Forest Service awarded Kittitas and Ferry counties $10 million each to implement a community wildfire defense plan.

Grant County, Oregon, likewise got $10 million. In its case to reduce flammable vegetation along 308 road miles that serve as evacuation routes.

Adjacent, thinly populated Wheeler County, Oregon, got $1 million to buy a new tractor with a long boom and attachments that can mow and mulch up to 50 feet from the road shoulder. Wheeler County pledged to clean up 250 miles of escape corridors at a pace of 50 miles per year.

The focus on wildfire evacuation routes can be traced back to a 2018 tragedy in northern California where 84 residents died as wind-whipped flames destroyed a mountain town with inadequate egress. Some of the deaths occurred when flames overtook cars attempting to flee the burning town.

“It was the fire in Paradise, California, that really put it on our radar,“ said Mike Starkovich, a former fire management officer for the Cle Elum Ranger District. “It’s staring you in the face. Oh boy, I see similarities here.”

“That was the match that ignited things, so to speak,” added Starkovich, who now works as a forest fuels specialist for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Last month, the tense evacuation of Canada’s famed Jasper National Park provided another reminder of why to care about this.

There, thousands of workers and visitors were forced to flee west with little notice on a clogged mountain highway through darkness, smoke and falling ash. Multiple fast-growing wildfires bore down on the Jasper townsite and blocked alternate routes to the east and south. Luckily, no one perished.

“It’s obvious that we have to work on that,” Starkovich said in an interview. “We want to minimize intense flames up to the roadway to be able to get people moving and then use it as a control line.”

Starkovich said the benefits of maintaining a passable road go both ways. Not only do you want evacuees to be able to get out, but responders need to drive toward the emergency safely.

How to strengthen an evacuation route against wildfire

Kittitas County Fire District 1 Chief Brandon Schmidt said area fire chiefs collaborated with local, state and federal agencies to prioritize a list of evacuation routes to work on with the federal grant. He would like to see hired crews thin spindly trees and clear brush as far back as landowners will allow, but at least 50 feet from the road edge.

“We’re not going to clearcut. Some people are worried about that and how it will look,” Schmidt said.

He said the “prescription,” as it is called in the lingo, entails removing and chipping downed limbs and snags. Brush and skinny, sickly saplings, known as “ladder fuels,” also get cleared out.

Schmidt said live, green trees thicker than 8 inches at chest height would be left standing, but limbed up to about 15 feet off the ground. The ultimate goal is to replace thick, overcrowded forest with an open understory that minimizes fire intensity if a wildfire approaches the road and reduces the potential for a crown fire.

Ranked highest on Kittitas County’s list of evacuation routes to strengthen against wildfire is state Highway 903 from Roslyn to Salmon La Sac. That tree-lined, two-lane paved road is the only way in and out for hundreds of homes and cabins in the Cle Elum Lake vicinity. The road also serves popular national forest campgrounds and trailheads at the head of the lake.

North Cle Elum Ridge and South Cle Elum Ridge are other priority places served by narrow, winding access roads. The county has experienced brisk population growth and heavy recreational use as people move or retire from urban western Washington to their little slice of heaven on the sunny side of the mountains.

The Kittitas County Conservation District is managing the contracting of the wildfire defense work under district manager Anna Lael. She estimated the project would take five years to complete.

Lael said she would strive to coordinate thinning projects with the U.S. Forest Service since many of the prioritized evacuation routes cross federal land. The thought being that the county’s grant money would be used on private and local and state government-owned lands and utility rights-of-way while the Forest Service could add its own resources to link up and extend the work onto its land.

Starkovich said fire fuels reduction work along roads that could be needed for evacuations has become a priority over the length of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Schmidt said one factor that could slow things down is needing to get permission from each private landowner with road frontage before the chippers, weed whackers and chainsaws rev up there.

“That’s going to be one of the tougher parts of this, that coordination with landowners,” Lael added.

Another wrinkle is the heavy competition for landscaping and thinning crews right now because of the broader emphasis on building fuel breaks in the woods on the outskirts of foothill towns. The long-standing Firewise program continues to work with homeowners groups to modify the landscaping around individual homes to withstand wildfires, too.

“It’s exciting to see this work rolling out the door,” Lael said. “We need to build up the momentum because it’s a lot of work to be completed.”