Wildfire worries: Sweating in our dry state

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CUMBERLAND - Chuck Frame jammed his fist into the guts of a rotting stump and withdrew a hunk of reddish, decaying wood the consistency of dough.

"I should be able to wring water out of this," the wildfire expert said, closing his palm. "Instead, nothing."

All along the western slope of the Cascades, this year's drought is baking normally mossy forests into an unusually combustible stew, setting the stage for Western Washington's most potent summer-wildfire conditions in a quarter-century.

Protecting woodland homes from wildfires Use noncombustible or fire-resistant roofing materials: The No. 1 cause of home loss is untreated wood-shake roofs, which can catch windblown sparks. Roof sprinklers don't always work: water pumps can fail during electricity outages, water pressure may be too low during a fire, and the same winds that threaten a roof can blow spray away from it. Prevent sparks from jumping from your home to the woods or vice versa: Exterior walls should be made of fire-resistant materials from the ground to the roof. Screen chimneys with noncombustible wire mesh. Cover attic or under-floor vents with wire mesh. Screen under porches to keep out sparks. Limit windows on sides of the house most likely to be exposed to fire. Create a safety zone around your home: Use fire-resistant plantings, grasses, flowers and vegetables within 30 feet of the house. Trim dead or low-hanging branches from trees and shrubs. Remove needles or other dead vegetation. Clean gutters and roofs regularly. Stack firewood away from homes, fences and combustible outbuildings. Install smoke detectors and have an escape plan. More information is available from the National Fire Protection Association at www.firewise.org. Also, contact the state Department of Natural Resources for information on upcoming free workshops in Spokane, Vancouver and Wenatchee on fire-safe vegetation, hazardous trees and more at 1-800-527-3305 or by e-mail at: fire_wise@adnr.gov.

It's far too early to predict how - or even if - dryness here will translate into flames. Unlike the high, dry woods in much of the West, these damp, old forests explode rarely, and only under particular circumstances.

But Mother Nature has laid the groundwork here this year as she seldom does, and the recent rain "has merely kept us from getting worse," Frame said. On top of that, the region's unfamiliarity with fire has left many Western Washington residents complacent and unprepared.

In an area of Southeast King County budding with new housing developments at the base of Mount Rainier, Frame trained his senses on a parched, densely forested knob.

To the regional fire operations manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, the hillside on this sunny spring day was an ominous mound of gunpowder.

Steady winds had sucked the needles of live Douglas firs so dry their east branches were brown, bald or, in some cases, gone.

The air smelled of strawberries, as wood fuels and brushy undergrowth dried and decomposed, releasing scented gasses rarely noticed before June.

Cigar-thick twigs usually damp enough to bend cracked underfoot.

Six years ago on this spot, 80-mph winds breathed new life into a Plum Creek Timber slash pile that had burned and been doused two weeks earlier. The blaze grew to 300 acres and came within a few dozen feet of tiny downtown Cumberland before winds died out

And that was in the dead of winter.

Ninety-nine years ago, summer fires raced up to 60 mph through 700,000 acres of the western Cascades, from Eugene to Bellingham. The state's deadliest fire ever, that year's Yacolt Fire in southwest Washington killed 38 people in 36 hours and charred 240,000 acres. The blaze alone was nearly 100,000 acres larger than the combined Tyee and Rat Creek fires outside Wenatchee that burned 37 houses in 1994, the largest fires since 1970.

Heat from Yacolt flames blistered house paint two miles away. Thick smoke darkened cities as far as Salem and Seattle, forcing residents to use lanterns at midday. Portland was buried under a half-inch of ash.

Now these areas, like the rest of the Northwest's most fire-prone forests, are littered with houses.

So many homes have sprouted directly on the ashes of the deadly 1902 Yacolt Burn that the state this year sought $413,000 from the federal government to help homeowners reduce fire threats, arguing that the area is still at risk of severe fire and now more heavily populated.

Communities near North Bend, northeast of Enumclaw and in the Yacolt area southeast of Mount St. Helens also are in the path of wild, unpredictable winds which, on dry days in particularly dry years, can turn sparks into conflagrations.

What percentage of the houses in these gusty woods were built, located and landscaped to survive fire?

Frame didn't hesitate: "It's in the single digits."

East vs. West

Apart from the 191,000-acre brush fire near the Hanford nuclear reservation, blazes that torched 7 million acres nationwide last year - most notably in Montana - largely missed Washington.

Neither side of the state may be so lucky in 2001.

Fire is a natural part of the dry pine, fir and larch forests of Eastern Washington. Under natural conditions in the low-elevation pine forests, it will race through every 10 years.

But years of fire suppression have allowed woody debris to collect, generating so much fuel that a spark in a dry year can be as risky as a lit cigarette near a gas pump.

In the western Cascades, fire cycles are more complicated, ranging from 200 to 400 years, with intervals between major fires lengthening the farther north one travels.

Historically, the Willamette Valley has supported lots of fire. In Western Washington, meanwhile, experts have dated three massive, regionwide fire episodes in the past 750 years.

One, which raged from Shelton to Port Angeles in 1701, is now believed to have been linked to the big subduction earthquake the year before, which toppled trees and left them to die.

"The record suggests there were times in the past when much of the region went up at one time," said James Agee, a forest ecology professor with the University of Washington, and the Northwest's foremost wildfire authority. "We're still not entirely sure why."

Though the odds of such catastrophic fire remain small in Western Washington, they're significantly increased by this year's drought conditions.

"We're primed for a fire season like we've never seen," said Agee. "It depends what happens this summer."

In normal summers, sparks during dry spells can burn withered grasses, needles and underbrush. But larger materials - the so-called 1,000-hour fuels of thicker standing or downed timber - retain enough moisture that they merely smolder.

Now, with snowpack hovering just above 50 percent, the stands are drying out and officials hope enough spring and summer rains fall to keep the smaller vegetation green.

"On the West Side, we have long return intervals, with infrequent stand-replacement fires - big, hurking fires," said Erik Christiansen, a fire analyst with the Northwest Fire Coordination Center in Portland. "The two big factors are dryness of large material, and day-to-day moisture. As long as there's enough moisture to keep the small sticks and grasses wet, then the big material won't have a chance to ignite."

But if there are no big late-spring or summer rains, then a three-week dry spell in July or August, a spark and a big wind gust that pushes fire into the canopy, "there's little that can stop it unless the wind changes," Agee said.

Much like the fuel-loaded Yellowstone National Park fires a dozen years ago, which were fed by heavy winds and cold, dry air, Western Washington fires can be insatiable under such extremes.

"In 1988, the Yellowstone fires burned through the young (trees), the old, the recently dead, and the brand-spanking new," Agee said. "In the western Cascades, we tend to have a lot of fuel, that, under most conditions, just won't burn. But if we get a lot of lightning strikes and a big wind event in one of these unusual years, watch out."

While Washington sees on average about 1,500 lightning strikes during the summer and early fall, two years ago in August there were more than 10,000 strikes in less than a week.

And fighting the blazes can be complicated. While fires spread faster in Eastern Washington, fuels on the west side of the Cascades are thicker and take longer to cut through when crews are trying to stop fires.

Meanwhile, to battle huge wildfires, authorities also need access to lake water that can be gathered by helicopter. They like a turnaround time of less than five minutes. But since most major blazes here start only under drought conditions, mountain lakes could be dry.

"It can take the same number of bodies to fight a 500-acre fire here as it does a 20,000-acre fire in Eastern Washington," said Frame.

Summer breeze

Throughout the winter and on a few days in spring and summer, east winds pick up speed, roll over Chinook Pass, compress and race down the White River Valley into southeastern King County.

As the air accelerates down the mountain slope it can reach 120 mph, said Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.

Similar patterns are repeated west of Snoqualmie Pass and beyond the Columbia River Gorge in east Clark County - two of the hottest residential real-estate markets in the state.

What makes Hood River a world-renowned windsurfing spot also makes firefighters sweat.

"When that hot dry air spills over the gap in the mountains, the humidity drops, temperatures increase," said Bob Bannon, the state's fire-prevention manager. "If there's a spark, we're toast."

Robin Shell knows those winds.

Down the road from where Frame was assessing fire danger, Shell and Bill Howard burned yard waste on forested property outside their mobile home a half-mile east of Cumberland. Around the smoldering flames, the couple had stacked sheets of plywood as windbreaks. Softball-sized burn marks covered an aging couch several feet from the fire.

"On some nights, I swear the wind makes the house move," Shell said.

It's so strong her children like to don oversized coats, get on their bicycles, and let the breeze push them down the road like sailboats. In one nasty storm, the wind tipped over a chicken coop and shifted a boxcar the couple used for storage.

Still, the two scoff at the prospect of fire in the woods a dozen feet from where they sleep.

"These trees are too wet to burn," Howard said. He stirred the burn pile and laughed. "I know. I've tried."

Frame runs into that sentiment everywhere around here.

A few miles from Shell and Howard, beyond the tiny town of Selleck, the road comes to a T. Straight ahead lies a vast valley of fir and hemlock sprinkled every few acres with the roofs of houses.

Frame could barely control his unease. "Look at that guy's cedar roof - that's asking for trouble," he said. A few houses later, he snapped, "There's wood piled next to that house - that's going to burn."

Alongside a home under construction, Frame spotted the tunnel dug for utilities: "That's not going to be a big-enough water supply in a fire."

Some developments in Western Washington have covenants that require people not to clear trees near their homes. Some rural subdivisions, while under construction, have roads that aren't strong enough to support heavy firefighting equipment.

Overlooking the valley of houses are two signs. One announces the sale of 20-acre wooded home sites. The other reads: "Your Community Needs Your Help!!! Become a volunteer firefighter."

"Need I say more?" Frame asked.

Wet spring or summer?

Fire season officially starts April 15, but the major fire risks in Western Washington are predicated on weather during the next 90 to 120 days, which is impossible to anticipate.

Often, dry winters are followed by wet springs or summers.

"The computer models aren't real clear," said state DNR meteorologist Greg Sinnett. "In 1976 and '77 we had a severe drought, but we didn't have a severe fire season."

After the 1992 dry spell, when lawn watering and some car washing was banned, there were more summer fires than in recent years, but not by much.

But in 1970, an extremely dry winter was followed by dry spells from May to August. More than 215,000 acres burned that year in Eastern Washington. And in 1994, another warm, dry spring was followed by record-high temperatures in July. At month's end, dry thunderstorms and 40-mph winds helped whip up small fires. By season's end, 260,000 acres had burned.

"Right now, we're in the same condition we were at the end of the summer last year," said Sinnett. "All the fuels are dead and on the ground. We're really looking ahead to see what kind of rain patterns we'll have in June; it's kind of our last chance."

Craig Welch can be reached at 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com.