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Crews gear up for fire season

June 19, 2009, 4:27 pm

Local fire chiefs are gearing up for another fire season just as they normally would despite a wet spring on the Palouse.

“You don’t know what you’re going to have until you’re in the middle of (fire season) or until it’s over,” Moscow Fire Chief Ed Button said. “It’s impossible to predict but you have to prepare every year the same way.”

Most wildland and grass fires in the Moscow area are covered by the 35 volunteers that make up the Moscow Rural Fire District, which is headed by Button. Button said last year’s fire season was a “fairly quiet” one but that it is not always that way.

“Some years a guy will have bad luck with a combine and start a field of standing wheat on fire. That’s a high dollar loss,” Button said.

The best thing residents can to do prepare for the season is clear “wildland fuels” away from their homes. Anything combustible can be considered a fuel, Button said. He suggested clearing grass clippings and downed branches from around homes and checking wooden fences to ensure they are not directly attached to a home, if possible.

“You have to think about and prepare for the worst. A lot of people’s mind-set is, ‘Nothing bad is ever going to happen to me,’ but if you’re living in the wildland-urban interface, you have to think about what would happen if a fire were going to come toward your house,” Button said.

Washington Rural Fire District 12 Fire Chief Lester Erwin said he treats the Fourth of July as the beginning of the fire season.

“What we look at is the wetness of the spring, the growing period, and the dryness,” Erwin said. “The dry spell we had about two weeks ago jumped us up by about two weeks, I think.”

For more on this story, check DNews.com or the Saturday edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.