State remains at risk of record-breaking wildfire destruction thanks to funding problems

Washington has seen two straight years of record-breaking wildfire destruction. And funding issues could put the state at risk of going up in smoke yet again.

First, it was the Carlton Complex of fires in 2014, scorching more than a quarter million acres in Central Washington, and taking with it over 300 homes from Twisp to Pateros. It was the biggest single fire in history.

Just a year later, the Okanogan complex of fires ripped through north-central Washington and nearly broke the record for the size of a single fire set the year before. By summer’s end, flames ravaged more than a million acres across the state. At $374 million dollars, it was the most expensive fire season in Washington, ever.

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Joe Smillie with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources says they had about 8,500 personnel fighting fires in August and the department still had to request assistance.

Smillie says the Legislature spent about $190 million to cover the bill after the fact. While it’s standard to allocate some money to firefighting and pay the balance later, Smillie says getting more of that money up front would be a game changer.

“The idea was if we got the money up front we could have more personnel ready and equipped in advance and we wouldn’t have those large fires that rack up those large bills,” Smillie said.

So, the department asked for another $24 million in this year’s supplemental budget to do prevention work, in addition to the $10 million the DNR already gets for prevention. That includes strategies such as thinning forests, controlled burns, and helping homeowners get ready for the fire season by creating defensible space around their properties.

For a few years now, the DNR has gotten a fraction of what they’ve asked for.

Republican Representative Joel Kretz lives in Okanogan and has pushed for more money for firefighting. He says the memory of the last two fire seasons is still fresh.

Kretz has been out on the fire lines and says prevention steps can make or break a fight against fire.

Kretz does think the state fire response needs an overhaul, that private citizens and local fire districts should have more power to respond to fires on state land that could spread to forests, farms, and homes. He also wants more aggressive responses to fires.
However, Kretz says more money is needed. And it’s blocked by people who just don’t understand the gut-wrenching agony of losing everything, year after year.

“One legislator that was very involved in the funding of this stuff at one point just said look I don’t give a damn about this fire stuff, it doesn’t affect my district,” Kretz said.

But State Senate Democrat Christine Rolfes of Kitsap County says that’s not it at all. She says the fire funding has become a political battle, and that the people stonewalling are in Kretz’s own party.

“For example, in last year’s budget [2015] Democrats in the House gave them about half of what they requested,” Rolfes said. “The Republicans in the Senate gave them zero. And then that number was reduced significantly when the two sides came together.”

Rolfes says the budget had been slashed during the recession, but now that the state has some more wiggle room, there are more issues competing for limited dollars, like education and mental health funding. As Democrats and Republicans battle over the budget and whether to raise new revenue to fund it all, fire prevention loses out.

“And we were hoping to get ahead of it this year,” Smillie said. “We’ll still make due with what we got but it would have been nice to have some more.”

So far, Smillie says crews have knocked down at least 30 wild land fires this year. And with warmer, drier weather in the forecast across the northwest, only time will tell if 2016 will be just as catastrophic as 2015, and 2014.

Meanwhile, firefighters are training, crews are doing forest thinning and controlled burns – everything they can to get ready.

And Representative Kretz is hoping it will be enough.

“I can tell you we’re tired of it in Okanagan County. We’ve had enough. And it hasn’t been working.”