Drill tests wildfire response in county

SAGLE — A wind-whipped fire swept through a rural housing development Wednesday morning. More than 15 structures were evacuated and five homes were destroyed in the 12-acre blaze.

That was the theoretical outcome of a large-scale wildfire training exercise which brought together emergency workers and firefighters from local, state and federal agencies.

No homes or property were damaged in the mock fire disaster.

The scripted exercise unfolded in real time in a partially developed subdivision off Sagle Road. The Sagle Fire District organized and funded the event through a grant from the Bureau of Land Management, and developers of Canyon Creek Ranch allowed the use of their property.

It’s the second time Sagle Fire has put on the exercise.

Wildland 2008 was a more basic affair, while Wildland 2009 was a fully functional exercise involving medical response, shelter setup, water supply operations and fire suppression.

Local participants included Bonner County, the Sandpoint Fire Department, and the Northside, South Boundary County, Spirit Lake, Timberlake, and West Pend Oreille fire districts. State resources included the department of lands, state police, the bureau of homeland security and the transportation department. The U.S. Forest Service and American Red Cross rounded out the list of participants.

“It starts as a small brush fire and it grows and grows,” Joe Farago, the exercise’s public information officer, said of the scenario.

The drill was designed to test interagency cooperation and communication in an evolving and expanding incident. It was also used to highlight the importance of precautions landowners can take to protect their homes from a wildfire.

“This is a pretty realistic scenario,” said Sagle Fire Chief Rob Goodyear, who designed Wildland 2009.

The imaginary homes were assigned certain characteristics, such as siding and roofing types. The structures’ proximity to propane storage tanks and woodland fuels were also identified. The descriptions were meant to help firefighters decide which homes could be saved and which ones were lost causes because they could not be safely defended — a process called “structural triage.”

The harsh reality lurking behind the mock disaster is that Bonner County has largely dodged the wildfire bullet for several years. A catastrophic fire event is a matter of when, not if.

“Everybody says, ‘It can happen someplace else, but it can’t happen to me,’” said Bob Hatfield, chairman of BONFire, the county’s hazardous fuels treatment program.

During last year’s exercise, in which actual homes were triaged, a few homeowners were advised their residences perished in the scenario because there was no defensible space and too many adjacent fuels. Wildland 2008 also coincided with a headline-commanding wildfire which tore through the Spokane Valley.

However, Hatfield said he did not receive a single inquiry about the BONFire program, which helps landowners create defensible space around their dwellings and implement other fire countermeasures.

“We’re going to have an event up here and it’s going to be devastating,” Hatfield said.