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Boise fire was a textbook case of the need for firewise home protection
Submitted by Rocky Barker on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 8:35am.
The fire that destroyed 10 homes,damaged nine others and killed a resident on the bench that includes Columbia Village in Boise Monday came right out of the textbook of Forest Service fire behavior expert Jack Cohen.
There wasn't the wall of fire that overwhelmed the homes. Instead there was fuel in the yards and on the roofs of the homes that carried the fire from the sagebrush and grass into the subdivision. "Firewise," tactics of clearing away fuel from around the homes and the requirement of fireproof roofs would have limited the damage.
It began as a grass fire near Holcomb and Amity and pushed by gale force winds climbed from the flats near the old Oregon Trail up the steep ridge to start the arbor vitae bushes and trees homeowners had planned there. Quickly, it rose from the ground into the trees and up through the soffits and eaves of the homes and into the cedar shake roofs.
“You could see the shake roofs going up,” said Dennis Doan, Boise fire chief.
The fire then began jumping from roof to roof, leaping over the street to the next block of houses. Firefighters were cutting lines in the bushes and the trees of neighbors trying to contain the fires to the existing houses in what had now become mostly an urban fire up on the rim.
Only the quick and effective action of the Boise firefighters kept the blaze from burning right through the 1,000 home subdivision.
Tom Boatner retired as the head of the Bureau of Land Management’s chief of fire operations at the National Interagency Fire Center last year. He lives on the other side of Columbia Village.
“I cut down thew bushes and the grass a couple of times a year but hardly anyone else does,” Boatner said.
“It’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more often,” he said.
Just as Cohen describes though the fire doesn’t burn like a wall through the subdivision even through it raced through the fully cured cheat grass to its edge. Then it is the bushes and the trees around the homes and cedar shake roofs that carry the fire through the developed area.
“That fire had a fuel corridor all the way to Highway 21,” Boatner said. “What stopped it was suburbia.”
Fire spreads not as a mass but as a series of ignitions of material in its path. If there is nothing to burn, the fire stops or goes around the area with no fuel. This concept was learned by pioneers heading West on the Oregon Trail that snakes through the area that burned Monday. In an account of immigrants in the 1840s surprised by a prairie fire, Henry Lewis described how they mowed down grass, piled it up and lit a back fire that burned all the fuel around them.
"Thus, although they are surrounded by a sea of flames, they are relatively safe, " Lewis wrote.
What stopped this fire from destroying more homes at Homestead Rim at the base of the ridge was the last minute clearing of brush and the watering down of wooden fence on the edge of the sagebrush and grass. Residents like Rick and Leslie Feeser got out their hoses and soaked the wooden fence as other neighbors cut and dug the grass and brush away from the fence.
Their makeshift line keep the fire, that would rise to 20 feet or more in wind gusts and its burned down the ridge, from racing into the subdivision. But it was the arrival of Boise firefighters and a make-shift team of federal firefighters who lived in the neighborhood.
Some of the team was a part of the Boise BLM District fire crew including Scott Sugg, normally the head of a helicopter crew. He walked out of his house and took charge of the crew, which included men who usually sit behind a desk at NIFC.
The crew included people from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the BLM who in minutes joined together to cut the line with Boise firefighters that saved Homestead Rim.
Dennis Conrad of the BLM lives across Amity at Burton Woods subdivision. He saw the fire and instead of heading to yard near NIFC he ran right to the fire.
“I had to borrow a shirt,” he said.
This kind of wildland-urban fire in the Columbia Village area surprised even officials like Fire Chief Doan.
“We’re used to it in the foothills but not here,” Doan said.
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It's a shame; but...
...I'd have to agree with your assessment.
My heart goes out to the families that lost so much - including a loved one - in this devastating fire.
Most tragic perhaps, is how avoidable it almost certainly was.
Back in the late 80's /early 90's when I worked the wildfires, I was often amazed at how many homeowners had their heads-in-the-sand regarding their homes vulnerability.
Shake roofs, a cord of wood up against the house alongside gas cans, zero firescaping, etc...
I often wondered (sometimes aloud) why they didn't just dowse the property in kerosene and get it over with.
Evidently, not much was learned from the Foothills Fire of '96, and I suspect the lessons from this fire will also be soon forgotten.
--
Bravo' and Brava' to the exceptionally brave men and women of the various fire agencies that risked all fighting this fire.
I got hammered for saying what you just said
in the main forum. But you are completely correct. Please people, firewise your homes if you live on a wildland interface. It's your families lives that hang in the balance.
Ladder fuels
I am utterly amazed that people living in wildland interface areas don't clear their yards. This is indeed a textbook case of what NOT to do. People keep calling this a wildland fire, but it was an urban fire (as pointed out in the article). BIG difference.
It started as a wildland fire
And moved across the wildland/urban interface.
City Subdivisions
I think folks living in a city subdivision do not consider themselves in the wildland urban interface. I would even hazard a guess that most folks think of cabins in the woods as being at risk, but not a home in a subdivision. This tragic event hopefully will increase awareness that fire can happen anywhere to anyone. If your neighbor's home catches fire, your home is at risk no matter where you live.
Its time to ask our leaders to address zoning laws for all housing - not just those in the interface. And its time for all homeowners to take a look at their homes and ask themselves - Are we firewise?
Wildland
Can anyone tell me when the US became a "wildland?" Isn't that just some kind of recent USFS land zoning terminology?
Wildfire
You bring up an interesting point Bob, I think we used words like Range Fire and Forest Fire when I was younger. You hear a lot of the new words like wildland urban interface. This phrase does make one think of private property abutting Federal or State land.
Now if your land does abut Federal or State land - are you responsible or are you allowed to fire abate that strip of land on the outside of your property line? From what I can find out, you can't. Last summer two homes outside of Warren were destroyed by fire - homes that were surrounded by thick national forest, so their efforts to be firewise were in vain. [See: Statesman Letters to the Editor July 27th.]
Wildland and US taxpayers
Thanks, YPMule.
And I am serious: when (and by whom) was the term "wildland" coined? Rocky?
This new zoning term is used for mostly public lands that were once home to Piutes, Mollalla, Nez Perce and other Native Americans, and to loggers, ranchers, hunters, and campers after them. Then they became "wild" and have been bursting into costly, deadly, and ugly wildfires ever since.
We used to have grass fires, forest fires, house fires, prairie fires, and so on. Now we debate whether a fire is "wildland" or not. When did that happen? Why?
These things are predictable and preventable. Common sense and concern for future generations should be our guides -- not flaky politicians or opportunistic "scientists." Our parents and grandparents knew better. What is our problem?
This is both a semantics and an accountability issue, and (to my way of seeing things) an important one.
I have to agree
They should be protecting themselfs but they aparently didn't even think about it. Out in Southeast Boise we had a fire last week the BLM made it out after about an hour but many people didn't clear around their homes or have fire fighting equipment avalible. Everyone should be raedy to fight a fire but even in the sagebrush people are dumb. Good thing we have our earea firewise I have even considered helping the others in our community becoming firewise as they clearly need it. At least the firemen responded to this one we are on our own out of town
FIRE
Fire safing neighborhoods costs money or takes work and some home owners associations require fuel in your yard just as columbia village does as well as roofing styles don't forget siding or fencing and other codes require attic vents but all the "Luck" with this fire is that there was not any others in the valley at the same time. the cold front winds which enabled the rapid spread and intensity of the fire could have caused pure meyhem had there been a lighting strike or two maybe a power line near emmett an idiot burning trash elsewhere things which happen every year in fact had there been an ignition off ammity on an august 2006 night when fire resources throughout southern idaho including boise city had a volume of things going on the results would have been more tragic and the caring folks of boise could have whitnessed a californian style interface where the whole neighborhood goes streaming off into the desert whithin a ribbon of smoke I do commend all those who stopped the fire and especially those who have been working on the cooperation of the involved agencies for many years great job y'all
Thank you firefighters
There's a reason firefighters are among the most respected in our society. Thank you firefighters for your bravery and wise actions that prevented a tragedy from becoming a catastrophe. Only their diligent efforts kept an entire neighborhood from being destroyed.
Everyone has an opinion
As someone who lost everything on Monday night other than our lives...
It is a little disheartening to see all of the opinions regarding this fire without some facts to back it up. There was much debate in our neighborhood about the roofs. Apparently our HOA had written in that roofs had to be shake roofs. My husband and I were planning to fight it when we were able to re-roof. Insurance will pay for the clean up if a fire happens but not to have the roofs replaced for prevention. To say we hadn't thought about it is ignorant. Given the location of the power lines, there is probably more that could have been done to prevent a spark in the power lines from turning into a full-fledged wildfire, but the weather is really a critical component in all of this.
We have been through so much in the last couple of days, and it is really hard to see what is perceived as blaming the victims. Had the wind not been 50 mph, this wouldn't have happened. Please be a little sensitive at this time.
And thank you
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the firefighters and volunteers. The outreach has been truly remarkable and overwhelming. You have all made such a difference already to a hurting community.
Firewise in this case Why!!!
Boise Burnout posted "Had the wind not been 50 mph, this wouldn't have happened." Blaming the home owners is not the answer. Look at the familys who had homes on the other side of the street. Tell me exactly how they should have "Firewise" their homes, or did anybody think of that. It seems to me that under the conditions,"firewise" or not the loss of life and distruction could have, and did happen. On the other hand Idaho Power uses aluminum on just about all their hardware. As some of the home owners will find out, you have to use larger aluminum wire then if you use copper. It is code, but where is the power companies CODE! I know this for fact, if you have 100amps going to your home and you use Aluminum wire from the meter weather head, to the breaker panel you must use 2 ought wire. Now go look at the wire that feeds the meter from the power pole to the meter. It is twice if not more smaller.... what is the logic in that. And yes it is aluminum wire. So tell me the D ring that melted, has the capacity of what load vs the loads sent through that line everyday. Something has to give, and in this case it is the weekest link in the chain. And isn't Idaho Power suppose to control the weeds under it's lines. Or has the Utility Commission granted that they need not do that as well. Like the Labor Commision, the Utility Commission is a waste of tax payers dollars.... sorry getting off the subject. No matter what these people need and deserve our help as a community as a whole.