Forest Service officials provide outlook on 2019 fire season in Payette National Forest

By: 
Steve Lyon

There have been fewer fires on the Payette National Forest over the past few summers, but those fires have been larger and consumed more acres, U.S. Forest Service officals said on Monday.
 In their annual meeting with Washington County commissioners to discuss the fire outlook, Forest Service fire management officer Sean Johnson said there will be a fire season on the forest. How big the fires are and how many is unknown.
 Experts in the agency that make long-range predictions have said the outlook from May through August is for an average fire season. Summer forecasts for the Great Basin are calling for above average temperatures and above average moisture.
 On average, there are 60-65 fires annually on the Payette National Forest. Last year, there were 42 fires, Johnson said, and the trend over the past couple of years has been fewer fires.  
 Staffing for the summer fire season is already in place in Weiser and Council. There are two fire engines stationed at each location on the forest’s west zone. There are 15 firefighters in Weiser and 23 in Council, including a handcrew.
 The Forest Service is also responsible for fire coverage on BLM land west of U.S. Highway 95.
 The higher elevations of the Payette National Forest usually don’t see a fire season start until July. That’s typically when summer storms bring dry lightning and are responsible for 95 percent of the fire starts.
 Johnson said there was a lot learned from the large Keithly and Mesa fires in 2018 in Washington and Adams counties, especially in the area of sharing communications.
 “What we can all agree on is we can’t do this job without each other,” Johnson said.
 Johnson brought up the issue of fire response in areas considered “no man’s land,” referring to private property in the county that is not in any fire district and does not have fire protection.
 In those cases, the county sheriff has the authority and jurisdiction, but the sheriff does not have any fire-fighting resources to call out to fight a fire.
 The Forest Service has agreements with fire districts in southwest Idaho to respond to fires. Where there are agreements in place, the Forest Service will respond if called out on a mutual aid arrangement and no charges are accrued for the first eight hours, Johnson said.
 If the Forest Service responds to a fire on private property that is not in a fire district and without fire protection, the federal agency will charge for fire-fighting services.
 “That is automatically billable for all resources,” Johnson said.
 Johnson said the policy is incrementally changing on when the Forest Service will respond to a fire on private property outside of a fire district.
 If someone reports smoke from a fire, the effort is made to find out if the fire is on public or private property and the exact location. The Fire Service’s interagency dispatch will call that county’s emergency dispatch to ask about fire response.
 “We’re going to be asking those questions: Do you want us to respond?”
 Commissioner Kirk Chandler said there are private property owners in the rural Rock Creek area west of Weiser that are not in any fire district and don’t want to be in a fire district.
 They understand fire protection and fire response is totally up to them, Chandler said.
 Land ownership and fire jurisdiction is complex in some areas of the county, such as Rock Creek, where there is a checkboard pattern of private land ownership and BLM land. The Forest Service will fight fires on BLM land.
 Commissioner Nate Marvin, a former fire chief, said the county 911 dispatcher is unlikely to know whose jurisdiction is involved when a call comes in about a range fire.
 The Payette National Forest staffs up for the fire season with about 245 people to cover the forest’s 2.2 million acres.
 

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