West Pend Oreille gears up for fire season

PRIEST RIVER — The West Pend Oreille Fire District is gearing up for this fire season.

Already large wildland fires have erupted across the western United States. It’s barely July, and so far 21 large fires have burned 160,000 acres of land in the United States this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The Erskin fire in central California and the Cedar fire in Arizona alone have each burned over 45,000 acres, said the NIFC.

WPOFD chief Les Kokanos said his main priority is keeping everyone and their equipment ready for when the call comes in.

“We’re ready now. We could go out and do our thing,” he said. But he and his crew are working on “getting everything in tip-top shape so we don’t have problems.”

WPOFD has been bringing a surplus military truck up to code as a fire district vehicle, as well as making sure that their water tenders and brush trucks are in the best shape possible when needed. The fire district has more brush trucks than many other rural districts, said Kokanos.

Wildland fires have become extremely costly in recent decades. For example, the U.S. Forest Service annually spends about half of its budget on fire suppression, said U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Robert Bonnie in a June 28 Wired Magazine article. That’s a big change from 20 years ago, when firefighting expenses only took 16 percent of the USFS budget, said the article. Accordingly, reliance on federal money for fighting wildland fires is at a tipping point. Congress is considering classifying large wildland fires as natural disasters in order to free up more federal funds for fire suppression, but that proposal has not succeeded to date.

That means that local and state governments’ ability to deal with blazes is still critical.

So far this year the volunteer firefighters have responded to one wildland fire just outside of Priest River said Kokanos. It’s been quiet recently, but the very hot weather the area has experienced combined with breezy conditions are the perfect mixture for an explosive fire, he added.

Kokanos stressed that residents should strictly follow state and local guidelines on burning at this time of year. “It only takes a little thing and then it takes off and you’re in trouble. As hot as it is this afternoon it’d be a terrible time for a fire.”

He also said the fire district would welcome new help. “Come around and volunteer,” he said. For more information, call WPOFD at 448-2035 or email wpfd1@conceptcable.com. The fire district office is located at 61 Airfield Way in Priest River.