YAKIMA — Warmer spring weather and relatively little snow at lower elevations in the central Cascades would typically provide an ideal opportunity for prescribed burns to reduce fire risks.
Instead, agencies throughout Washington agreed those benefits don’t outweigh concerns about smoke making people more vulnerable to COVID-19, a dangerous respiratory illness. But officials know a virus won’t slow the wildfire season, so they’re preparing for an entirely new set of challenges on top of the usual fire danger.
Washington Department of Natural Resources fire operations supervisor George Geissler said they’re in close contact with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to look at policy changes to protect firefighters’ health, especially with the need for social distancing.
DNR, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, and local fire districts are working on prevention strategies that require help from everyone.
“The public being extra cautious and preventing (wildfires) is becoming more and more critical for us,” Geissler said. “I’m asking everybody to please be careful.”
Preparing for the worst
Large groups of firefighters work and live together for days at a time while containing prescribed fires and fighting dangerous wildfires capable of rapid growth. Without changes, that could create an environment conducive to the spread of the coronavirus.
For now, Geissler and the wildlife department’s prescribed fire manager, Matt Eberlein, can move some things online, such as interagency communication, interviews for seasonal workers and training.
“We’re writing new burn plans for different areas,” Eberlein said. “We’re actually trying to develop some ways that we can do a virtual training via a Skype conference with some of the staff where we actually have to interact with them rather than just an online service.”
DNR canceled all three of its fire academies, which Geissler said usually draw between 1,300 and 1,500 students. This year they’ll be asked to learn from their local district fire managers in small groups to follow social distance guidelines and Geissler said the department will likely forego additional specialized training available at the academies.
Training has already started, although DNR is still accepting applications at dnr.wa.gov/wildfirejobs. There’s also field work being done to take engines and helicopters out of storage to bring them back online.
Geissler said this time of year’s always busy, and the added concerns posed by COVID-19 only accelerated those efforts. His department’s working closely with other state and federal agencies to come up with new policies.
Strict restrictions on groups of people could mean fewer firefighters in trucks, different positioning, and adjustments to allow for quicker aviation response. Geissler noted work from local fire departments to respond to coronavirus cases and travel restrictions could mean fewer available firefighters.
“We’re planning for the worst-case scenarios,” Geissler said. “The idea that we may not have the resources to move state to state as we have in the past is very possible.”
Geissler said all of those considerations and more provided the motivation for the most planning he’s ever seen in 30 years of fighting fires. Eberlein noted early forecasts from the National Weather Service indicate conditions that would produce an equal chance of hot and dry or an average fire season, so he knows plenty of challenges remain.
“How do you put all these people in large fire camps and maintain this separation?” Eberlein said. “I think that’s almost an impossible question to answer.”
Limiting burning
Recently, the wildlife department was nearly ready to begin a prescribed burn project on Yakima County’s Oak Creek Wildlife Area between U.S. Highway 12 and state Route 410.
But more snow left too much moisture on the ground and then the governor’s order brought a mandate from wildlife department leadership to work from home. That forced what Eberlein calls a “tactical pause” for plans to burn 2,791 acres this spring in Eastern Washington, including 496 acres in Yakima and Kittitas counties.
“The agency looks at our work as essential for essential operations,” Eberlein said. “But with the governor’s proclamation we’re going to abide by that until things loosen up a bit.”
The Nature Conservancy’s Reese Lolley said that’s true across all agencies in Washington.
