Burning question looms for fire season: How severe?

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Wildfire season begins today in Lane County and firefighting officials are hedging. They are predicting an average fire season west of the Cascades. But they confess that they don't really know what's in store.

"We never know for sure," said Rod Nichols, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry. "Some years when we think the weather indicates a severe season, it doesn't happen."

Meteorologists base their fire season predictions on the amount of precipitation during the previous winter as well as the summer forecast, Nichols said.

But the fact is that summer weather - with lightning storms and hot days that turn fuels tinder dry - has a bigger impact than winter precipitation, he said.

During the 2005-06 winter, heavy snows fell in the Cascade Range, but the 2006 fire season was a doozy, with 526,000 acres burned, according to National Interagency Coordination Center records. But that's nothing compared with 2002, when almost 500,000 acres burned just in the Biscuit Fire in Southwest Oregon.

Firefighters are put in the position of preparing for the worst while hoping for the best, said Bob Young, fire policy manager for the state Forestry Department.

So far this year, 319 fires have burned 2,325 acres in Oregon. That's ahead of the 10-year average, Young said.

As firefighters gear up, homeowners who live near the forest are being encouraged to create safe spaces around their dwellings.

"Because Oregon is expanding in population, a lot of people are moving into the forest or near it," Nichols said. "Now we have to consider lives and property as well as putting out the fire."

Firefighters can't battle blazes in neighborhoods the same way they do in the woods, where crews can take a bulldozer and clear a swath of trees and brush to stop the advance of a fire, Young said. When houses stand in the path of a wildfire, firefighters use a more expensive air campaign.

Last year, the Black Crater Fire that burned 9,700 acres near Sisters was relatively small by wildland fire standards, but it cost $8.1 million to stop. Part of that expense was an aggressive air campaign with helicopters dropping water and retardant on the fire to keep it from raging into Sisters neighborhoods, Young said.

Some insurance companies are looking to ward off losses by requiring homeowners in harm's way to be better prepared. Companies such as State Farm and Allstate have begun contacting homeowners in wildfire-prone areas and asking that they create defensible spaces around their homes.

The goal is to safeguard lives and protect property, said State Farm spokesman Curt Penrod.

According to the Northwest Insurance Council, property losses from catastrophic wildfire exceeded $6.3 billion from 1990 through 2003, with more than 900 homes destroyed. Homeowners insurance companies pay out an average of $6 billion each year in fire-related claims, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Letters went out last year alerting homeowners most at risk in rural areas, Penrod said. Another batch of warnings will go out soon to those in urban and suburban environments where wildland fire could be a problem.

The letters suggest a variety of efforts to protect homes and keep house fires from spreading to nearby forests, Penrod said.

Those efforts include creating a defensible space around the house ranging from 30 feet to 100 feet, with firewood stacked away from the structure, no tree branches hanging over the roof or chimney, gutters cleared of leaves and tree needles, and a fire-resistant roof.

"We're advising customers to seek input from local fire departments," Penrod said. "It tends to be a little bit more of an art than a science."

Homeowners will be given 18 to 29 months to make the fire-safety changes and could lose their insurance if they don't comply.

"Our goal is to keep good customers. If a homeowner chooses not to complete the recommended safety measures, that does put his or her property and local firefighters at greater risk," he said.

For homeowners who make the required changes, there won't be any immediate benefit in the form of reduced insurance premiums. But if the insurance agency experiences a decrease in the claims it pays out over time, that could lead to future rate reductions or stave off potential rate increases, Penrod said.

"The primary driver of the price that customers pay for insurance is ... claim costs," he said.

Such home-protection efforts are good for neighborhoods but they're also good for the forest, Nichols said.

"There's a lot of talk about the forests threatening the homes in the wildland interface. Something that doesn't get talked about is that homes threaten the forests," he said.

Still, homeowners are generally much more educated now, Nichols said.

`It's worlds better than it was a few years ago. Covenants in some of the fairly fancy subdivisions required wooden shake roofs. They were basically telling people, `Build your house so it will burn down.' But fire experts have gotten them to lift those covenants,' he said.