BigHornRam
Well-known member
Good odds what is happening right now in Southern California will happen in Helena. That town is a fire trap. Buildings packed close together burn at incredibly high temperatures once ignited. If a fire starts in the wui with winds blowing towards town, it will be bad. Helena area should be #1 priority landscape in Montana.I’m all for more forest management, if only for the positive effect it would have on wildlife.
That said, I think the idea that we are gonna engage in fuel reduction on such a scale that it’s going to solve our wildfire problems, and the cost associated with them, is often bunk.
For one, timber is a commodity with production issues down the line in the west. For two, so much of what needs to be done will not net any money. The cost per acre of fuels reduction in areas without merchantable timber is not cheap and those areas are plenty . And third, particularly in the WUI, when it’s hot and the wind is blowing, the fire triangle becomes an isosceles, and whatever’s there will become a wall of flame - treated or not. One can look north to Canada to see examples of this.
I’m for fuels reduction and better timber management across the landscape, and I do believe it will help with fire and in particular initial attack, but I just think folks should have reasonable expectations regarding both the cost and effort, as well as the outcome. There’s a lot of glorious but overstated promises that will not prevent our next Big Burn, which most folks in the fire world know is coming.