BY KAREN BOSSICK

Periodic low intensity wildfire is like rain.

Huh?

That may not be a statement you’ve heard before regarding wildfire. But John Phipps contends that a community becomes resilient when they treat fire like rain, periodically allowing small intensity fires to burn in the area around them.

Phipps is director of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colo., which conducts research on experimental forests, ranges and watersheds.

Formerly of Ketchum, he came back this week to speak at a two-day conference, “Creating a Fire-Resilient Community,” sponsored by the University of Idaho and Sun Valley Institute Wednesday and Thursday at the Limelight Hotel.

Phipps told those attending the conference that the nation needs to make the shift from a focus on suppressing fires to a focus on fire resilience.

Suppressing fire increases the probability of low probability-high consequence events with catastrophic losses to environment, property and, perhaps, even lives, he said.

“These are the types of events where people say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ because they’re so big, so different,” he added.

Phipps told those attending the conference that the distribution of severe fire weather is different in 2017 compared to the 1980s when he was working on the Ketchum Ranger District.

“I couldn’t have envisioned a Castle Rock or Beaver Creek fire then,” he said.

The Forest Service inherited resilient grass lands and forests, thanks to Native Americans who understood the role of fire in the landscape and either set fires each year to promote a diversity of habitats or let the ones that nature sparked burn.

But the Forest Service instituted a policy of getting lightning-sparked fires out by 10 a.m. or risk losing your job, he said. Now, the Forest Service has to fight about 30 low probability-high consequence fires a year.

The nation is now at a tipping point in its handling of wildfire and suppression. Phipps said fire-resilient communities should:

• Accept that fire is required for resilience.
• Strategically treat fuels adjacent to communities.
• Allow naturally ignited fires in the outer reaches of the fire shed to play a natural role.

The time to manage risk comes before fire, Phipps said.

“We form watershed councils. Why not fire shed councils?” he said.

There’s no reason a structure should burn if it’s built of fire-resistant materials and the area around it is firewise, with vegetation cleared away from the home and landscaping that features less flammable plants.

Unfortunately, some communities have not learned from past mistakes.

The people of Oakland, for instance didn’t learn from the so-called Tunnel fire in 1991 that killed 25, injured 150 and destroyed 2,843 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominium units. They rebuilt densely spaced homes in the same locations with flammable vegetation in between.

The Wood River Valley ranks in the middle when it comes to vulnerability since its homes are not completely ringed by forest, Phipps said. The challenge here is flaming embers that can be carried up to a mile by wind.

That makes it all the more important that homes on the periphery are firewise, Phipps said.

Many people think the areas that burnt in the 2007 Castle Rock and 2013 Beaver Creek Fire will be spared from future fire in their lifetime. And the area burned in the Castle Rock fire did help to squelch the Beaver Creek fire when the latter fire ran into already-burned areas.

But David Bowman, a world renowned fire expert from the University of Tasmania, said he has seen the same parts of the Australian Alps burn three times in 2003, 2006 and 2007.

The real tinderbox to watch for in short order is Yellowstone National Park, he said.

The whole thing could go because it’s one continuous fuel load, he said.

Bowman noted that man learned to use fire to build our world, even essentially putting a fire into the Porsches we drive.

Now we need to understand and work with things like plant biology, fire’s relationship with carbon storage and global warming and biomass burning in order to intelligently use and manage fire into the future, he said.

“It’s a big question, and we need to throw everything in the toolbox at it,” he said.