Boise National Forest Begins Early Fire Prevention Planning

2005

Boise National Forest Begins Early Fire Prevention Planning

16February 2005

BOISE –

One look at the mountains of the Boise National Forest tells the story.

“It’s brown, it’s dry, and it doesn’t look very promising that’s going change for us,” said Guy Pence with the Boise National Forest.

So managers with the Boise National Forest have started planning for fire season a whole lot earlier this year.

“It’s February and we’re doing it,” Pence said. “We ordinarily do it in April or so.”

Southern Idaho is expected to have high fire potential, of course, because of the low snow packs and the warmer than normal weather we’ve been having.

In the West, the areas with highest fire potential extend from the Cascades across Idaho into Montana and northwest Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center’s wildland fire outlook.

And it would take quite a lot to turn this drought situation around.

“If our drought conditions were going to change in next 4 months, we’d have to have 15 inches of precipitation,” said Pence. “And I think we know now that’s not going to happen.”

Pence urges people to think about taking early fire prevention measures, especially creating defensible spaces around homes and cabins.

The Boise National Forest escaped serious fires last summer, mostly because there were few dry lighting strikes which cause most of the trouble.

This season, there’s no guarantee that luck will hold.

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24. November 2017/by GFMCadmin