Forest homes heat up fire risk

WASHINGTON -- There was a time when you could tell a forest from a suburb. One was a place filled with towering trees and rugged trails that lent itself to camping and weekend jaunts. The other one was where you lived.

But over the past three decades, homeowners coveting scenic views and pine-tinged air have blurred the line between wilderness and civilization -- and increased the risk to lives and property from forest fires.

That has U.S. Forest Service officials scrambling for more money to fight fires and calling on state and local governments to enact tougher land-development regulations.

Annual federal firefighting budgets that averaged $1.1 billion from 1996 to 2000 are expected to reach $3 billion this year, the Government Accountability Office says.

The fire risk is particularly acute in Washington, where developments are pushing deeper into the forests.

"It's the continuation of a trend that has been taking place across the West over a number of years," said Joe Shramek, a fire-control employee with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, which is responsible for protecting more than 12 million acres of private and state-owned forests.

"We've got issues with forest health in terms of fuels being primed and ready to lead to extreme fire behavior. We've had droughty conditions for quite some time. And we have increasing numbers of people living in areas that are fire-prone," Shramek said.

At a U.S. Senate hearing this summer, senators grilled officials from the departments of Agriculture and Interior, demanding an explanation for a new Government Accountability Office report that said the Forest Service is not adequately prepared for this year's fire season.

The agency officials said that homes in or near forested areas, which are the responsibility of state and local governments, are a major source of the problems.

Firefighting is generally a collaborative effort, with the unit closest to a fire responding first, regardless of jurisdiction. The Forest Service, with its arsenal of firefighting equipment and people, is often asked to come to the aid of state and local fire agencies when wildfires threaten homes near forest boundaries.

"Every new subdivision presents a new challenge and inherently more expensive fire-suppression cost, if we're going to defend that subdivision," Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Ray told the Senate in June.

Because firefighters always give priority to human life, the presence of more and more homes near forests often diverts resources from effectively containing fires, directing them instead to saving people.

"That means the defense strategy against the fire is dictated not by where the fire is moving within the forest, but where the houses are within the forest," said Jim Schwab, a researcher at the American Planning Association.

Money spent protecting these areas is money not used to keep the forest healthy, which helps prevent wildfires from starting, federal officials said.

Few development limits

Even as housing encroaches on wildfire territory, few counties require developments in high-risk areas to be accompanied by wide roads and turnarounds to accommodate firetrucks -- basic measures that would make firefighting less expensive and less dangerous.

"Homeowners and towns and counties have the opportunity to enact ordinances that would make their homes safer," said Bobbie Scopa, a forest-fire manager for the Okanogan and Wenatchee national forests. "But there's a certain amount of pressure to allow development. Some of these ordinances may cost the developments money."

Brian Minnich, legislative-affairs director for the Building Industry Association of Washington, said state laws meant to contain urban sprawl often result in more homes being packed into tighter spaces, leaving less room for wide roads and creating densely populated areas near wildfire zones.

"Some of the new development going in some of the more densely populated areas of King County have 3,000- or 4,000-square-foot homes, and they're not much more than 3 or 4 feet apart from each other," Minnich said.

But he added that most counties do have building codes that take wildfires into account, though he believes there should be more consistency between counties and a greater effort to teach homeowners how to maintain their land.

Forest officials said firefighters sometimes must contend with overgrown housing lots that can be fodder for fast-moving, catastrophic wildfires.

Laws haven't kept up

"One issue is that the laws haven't kept up with the current situation," said Mark Gray, a state Department of Natural Resources fire-prevention official. "The hazard laws we had in place were based on abating logging debris. But if a landowner just allowed their forest to become unhealthy and fuels to accumulate naturally, there wasn't anything we could do."

The Washington Legislature began to address the issue this year, creating a study group of state and county fire officials, environmentalists, housing developers, landowners, insurers and real-estate representatives to recommend new fire policies.

According to the bill authorizing the study, the group will evaluate whether state and local building codes adequately address the dangers posed by development in areas subject to wildfires.

The group also will examine whether an annual wildfire-protection fee that some forest landowners must pay is high enough -- it's currently about $18 for 50 acres of land -- and what Washington can learn from other Western states' wildfire policies.

"These kinds of laws are always controversial because they involve telling people what to do on their land," Gray said. "I think regulatory actions to create more restrictive zoning and so on are controversial. I think we're certainly not there yet. But we are getting closer to a tipping point."