Spokane County plans to mitigate wildfire risk

Spokane County has launched the process of developing a county-level Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

Local agencies and organizations in Spokane County have created a planning committee to complete the Community Wildfire Protection Plan as part of the National Fire Plan and Healthy Forests Restoration Act as authorized by Congress and the White House.

The Spokane County Community Wildfire Protection Plan will include risk analysis at the community level with predictive models for where fires are likely to ignite and where they are likely to spread. Northwest Management, Inc. has been retained by Spokane County and the Washington Department of Natural Resources to provide wildfire risk assessments, mapping, field inspections, interviews, and to collaborate with the committee to prepare the plan.

The committee includes rural and wildland fire districts, Washington Department of Natural Resources representative, land managers, city and county elected officials, agency representatives, community organizations, and many others.

Wildfire mitigation specialists are conducting analyses of fire prone landscapes and making recommendations for potential treatments. Specific activities for homes, structures, infrastructure, and resource capabilities will be proposed as part of the analysis. Some of the goals of this project are to reduce the wildfire risk to county residents, improve awareness of wildland fire issues locally, identify high fire risk areas and develop mitigation strategies to reduce this risk, and improve county and local fire agency eligibility for funding assistance.

One very important step in gathering information about fire risk in the county is to conduct a homeowner's survey. Northwest Management, Inc., in cooperation with the planning committee, will be mailing a brief survey to randomly selected homeowners in the county seeking input about home construction materials, proximity to water sources, and other risk factors surrounding homes.

This survey is very important to the success of the plan. Those homeowners that receive a survey are asked to please take the time to complete it, thereby benefiting the community overall.

The planning team will be conducting public meetings to discuss preliminary findings and to seek public involvement in the planning process in early March. A notice on the date and location of these meetings will be posted in local newspapers.

For more information on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan in Spokane County contact Janean Creighton, Spokane County Extension Office, at 509-477-2199 or Tera King at the Northwest Management, Inc. office in Moscow, Idaho at 208-883-4488.