In Idaho County, it's getting hotter and hotter

May 7—KAMIAH — As the population of Idaho County continues to swell, local emergency officials worry their small, understaffed departments will be unable to keep up with the demands for service.

Kamiah Fire Chief Bill Arsenault recently pointed out that in 2020, Kamiah Ambulance and Fire responded to 420 emergency calls, including structure fires and ambulance transports. The next year that was up to 631 calls.

And in 2022, the department was dispatched to 801 calls for service.

"Right now, we're on target to hit almost 900 to 1,000 calls this year," Arsenault said. Since January, he added, there have already been 25 structure fires in Idaho and Lewis counties — some fatal.

The reasons for the boom are many.

"People are traveling through the area," Arsenault said. "Also, we have an older population and we're a bedroom community. People are calling 911 for all kinds of things," including home births, a plethora of medical problems, shootings and stabbings.

"All of that stuff has increased," he said. "We had a traffic study done (that revealed) 8,000 cars go through Kamiah in a 24-hour period on U.S. Highway 12."

Underlying the surge in calls, however, is the burgeoning population of Idaho County.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 there were 16,267 people living in Idaho County. That number went up slightly to 16,542 in 2020.

By July 1, 2021, Idaho County's population grew to 17,053. One year later, in July 2022, the tally was 17,593.

"COVID-19 came and a lot of people wanted out of other states and moved to Idaho," Arsenault explained. "They wanted freedom from whatever political environment they were in and Idaho County is kind of the last of the western frontier, other than Alaska.

"People are getting pushed out (of other areas) and they can't afford to live in Sun Valley, or McCall, or Coeur d'Alene. But they can afford to live here and they can live off the grid — literally off the grid — and do their own thing."

Idaho County is one of the few entities in the state that has no building codes. While that appeals to individualistic thinkers, it creates problems for emergency responders.

"There's very little building code oversight and people can do what they want," he said.

Homes built in the last 40 years are made with lightweight construction that includes a lot of glues and petroleum products. When those structures catch fire "they're exceedingly flammable," he said, and can burn to the ground in minutes.

In addition, many people tend to collect or hoard their belongings in and around their houses.

"We have homes in this area where they are stockpiling 5-gallon propane tanks inside the home," Arsenault said. "(Homeowners) are stockpiling gas and diesel fuel inside homes. People are holding onto stuff and cluttering up their homes and they create a fuel load that's just unachievable in an initial attack.

"If they have a lot of clutter that we have to work through, it's difficult. If we don't even know where the house is at because they're not putting up an address, we have to spend time looking for it. And in the middle of the dark, out here in the mountains, we're chasing houses down, trying to figure out which house is which.

"But then people get upset when we show up and can't get the fire out," Arsenault said. "We didn't create the problem. We're responding to the problem."

* * *

The summer of 2015 started out as one of the hottest and driest on record. Normal cool, rainy and sometimes snowy conditions in June did not materialize and the mercury hit the 100-degree mark several times, foreshadowing a troublesome wildfire season ahead.

The first fire of the season was in the middle of June in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Two weeks later, on June 27, the Comstock Fire ignited, threatening the backcountry towns of Dixie and Comstock in Idaho County.

July was relatively quiet, giving fire managers a little breathing space to prepare for August when the wildfire season typically begins in earnest.

But in August, thunderstorms and lightning rolled through the area, touching off more than 250 wildfire starts.

Most of the fires were in the backcountry but after a severe windstorm whipped up the blazes on Aug. 14, several communities along the Clearwater River corridor and Camas Prairie came under evacuation notices.

People fled from their homes with barely more than what they could pack into their cars. Emergency shelters were set up in Kooskia and Kamiah, and the Orofino fairgrounds were opened to lodge pets and livestock.

One woman died near Kamiah while trying to leave her home. Wildfires across the West were extreme and resources were stretched thin.

That left many of the fires on the forest unstaffed and they quickly grew in intensity and size. Firefighters were directed to those fires only when they started to threaten communities.

By the end of September that year, more than 184,000 acres on the forest and 280,000 acres in the region had been scorched.

Seventy-three homes and outbuildings were lost and several others were damaged.

While it is too early to predict what kind of fire season 2023 will be, Jim Wimer, public affairs specialist and fire information officer for the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest, said the abundant rain so far this spring is likely to contribute to heavy grass loads in the river canyons. A lot depends on how quickly things dry out.

"Every year we're going to have a fire season," Wimer said. "It's just a question of when it starts and how long it is."

The Forest Service has held public meetings to inform people about the potential risks and encourage homeowners to take measures around their property that could reduce fire risk.

"From a Forest Service standpoint," Wimer said, "it's definitely beneficial for people to understand what kind of fire protection district they live in, who is near and to reach out ahead of time. There are a lot of projects that address fuels on private land but state and federal agencies are trying to address their fuel issues on their side of the fence where these areas come together.

"It can behoove a landowner to understand who their protecting agency is. That can help responders when they have to respond."

Wimer pointed out that the community of Orogrande in southeastern Idaho County is a perfect example of how property owners took the initiative to protect their property from wildfires.

"From 2016 to 2020, that community went out of its way to understand what they needed to do to protect their community," Wimer said. "And, lo and behold, it hit last year."

Last August, the Williams Fire ignited from a lightning storm in the Orogrande area and burned more than 15,773 acres.

Wimer said it's hard to quantify just how much the proactive work of the Orogrande community reduced the wildfire damage, "but the evidence before and after (indicate) that the fuels work, when (the fire) hit Orogrande, it decreased in intensity when it hit those fuels projects areas. It reduced the impact and gave the community and firefighters more options to protect their homes. It gave them time to set up sprinklers and get teams in place to protect.

"Yes, there was one primary residence, a trailer home, that was lost and several outbuildings that were lost," he said. "But, by and large, it truly reduced the impact of that fire to that community.

"It's a perfect example of what folks can do in our area to be successful. If that fuels work had not been done, I shudder to think what might have happened to the rest of those homes there."

* * *

Kamiah's Arsenault believes that the spirit of cooperation is one of the major obstacles facing local fire and emergency medical districts in Idaho and Lewis counties.

All of the agencies are operating on shoestring budgets with older and aging gear and equipment. Most rely on volunteers and, around the state, there are fewer people willing to get involved.

"Individually, we're not operating effectively," he said. "We're not. None of the agencies are.

"We could absolutely be operating more effectively, more financially efficiently and more operationally if we were a bigger organization of career and volunteer."

Arsenault is the president of the Idaho and Lewis counties Fire Chiefs Association that includes 28 individual fire departments. Of those, only Winchester, Craigmont and Nezperce have an auto-aid agreement, in which, when one department is called out on a fire, all three are automatically dispatched at the same time.

All the other departments, he said, have mutual aid agreements. Assisting agencies are not automatically dispatched for the primary agency unless it's requested. That system usually creates a time lapse that can prevent firefighters from making a rapid initial attack that could mean the difference between whether a structure is saved or not.

If all the individual fire departments in Idaho and Lewis counties could come together and agree on an auto-aid system, Arsenault said, it would create opportunities for receiving grants that could help pay for many of the equipment needs. A joint organization also would help lower fire insurance premiums for homeowners.

"I would love to make it happen," he said, "but there are departments that just do not want to do it."

He said most of the resistance comes from organizations that have always done things their own way and don't want to change.

"Bad things are going to happen. People aren't going to get grants. Fires are going to get bigger. There's going to be less people to put out the fire and somebody's going to get hurt or killed because people don't want to work together."

Arsenault said the solution is for the public to push their departments to work toward a systemwide auto-aid agreement.

"Communities need to step up and say to their organizational leaders, 'Hey, we need to make this happen for the greater good of our communities. We cannot operate as individualists, or silos or islands any more.'

"An area-wide fire department would absolutely be the most effective and efficient and cohesive and cooperative type of operation," Arsenault said. "But people have to put aside differences to make that happen. ... It can be done; it needs to be done and it's been done in other places. But we've got to put aside political differences and boundaries. We've got to put aside personal agendas and just look at the greater good."

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.