SULA — Residents outside of Sula are used to living with wildfires. With one road in and out, safety improvements are critical for the community. Now, a unique, collaborative project is underway to reduce wildfire risk and strengthen power infrastructure along the East Fork of the Bitterroot.
“It is one of the highest-rated counties, not only in our state, but in the country, in terms of fire danger to homes,” said Thayer Jacques, Hamilton unit manager with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DRNC).
Bitterroot National Forest had a record number of fire starts this year across the forest. In the hopes of preventing future fires, the Forest Service, the DNRC, Ravalli Electric Cooperative and Ravalli County partnered up.
“If we can be proactive, especially around these communities where we can treat these fuels and reduce the risk to those homes, it's just going to make it easier for the Forest Service and the firefighters when they're on the ground to control these fires,” Jacques said.
The project is focused on creating a fuel break, removing dangerous trees along a corridor of power lines that serve more than 280 homes.
“This area has a very rich fire history. We had the Johnson fire last year, in 2017, had the Myers fire and, I mean, there's just multiple fires,” said Bitterroot National Forest district ranger Steve Brown. “They have a number of outages every year based on trees falling on the power line. As you drive up, you can see all the different places where there's junctions in the lines that they've had to make repairs.”
The project is funded through the Montana Forest Action Plan. It is part of a larger push from both state and federal agencies to increase forest management and protect power infrastructure. It is implemented under the Good Neighbor Authority, which allows state agencies to do forest management on federal land. The partners involved said the project is good for all the neighbors.
“Really our job is to keep the lights on, keep the power on, but without the help of these other organizations to do this mitigation with us, we wouldn't be able to do what we do,” said Melissa Greenwood, Ravalli Electric Cooperative communications manager.
The team is also looking to extend the safety improvements to private land. They are in the planning stages of connecting residents with a Ravalli County grant. Locals can get funding for fire mitigation projects on their property, covering 75% of the cost.
“There's 280 homes up in here to protect and fire doesn't know these boundaries,” said Ravalli County forester Gary Oram. “What we're trying to do is the cross-boundary work.”
Work on the project is halfway done and expected to wrap up this fall. The partners all said the collaboration is strengthening both safety protections and teamwork throughout the East Fork.
“If a big windstorm, like we had last year in Missoula and then down here in Ravalli County, if that happens again, then if one of these trees falls, it's not going to hit this power line,” Oram said. “So we won't have to worry about that hazard. We can focus on the fire at that time.”
