After a blazing 2012, rural firefighters run into U.S. budget cuts

When a grass fire broke out on Arkansas 7 near Ola on June 25, the city’s volunteer firefighters saw the blaze spread quickly up a hill.

It was a task the 18 firefighters could handle: The fire jumped the road many times, but they snuffed it out as soon it did, Fire Chief Ritchie Tippin said. Once U.S. Forest Service and Arkansas Forestry Commission officials arrived and plowed a line around the blazes, the volunteer firefighters went home. But the blaze jumped the line and burned “out of control,” forcing them to return and call for help from up to 30 other fire departments, he said.

“We had everything out there we could take,” Tippin said, adding that the fire burned as much as 1,100 acres and destroyed an abandoned home. “Even with the help, it took nearly 15 hours to control the fire. It was the biggest fire that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been on since ’72.”

Should Tippin and his firefighters face a similar blaze this summer, it could take even longer to fight it. Because of federal budget cuts, help from the Forest Service will be limited.

The U.S. Forest Service is expected to have 500 fewer firefighters and at least 50 fewer fire engines for this summer’s fire season because of federal sequestration, spokesman Larry Chambers said. Sequestration, or automatic budget cuts, slashed 5 percent of the service’s nearly $2.2 billion fire budget, and federal officials have said most of the cuts will come from fire prevention and reparation projects.

The service’s funds earmarked for truck and aircraft operations and firefighter pay dried up last year during the wildfire season, one of the worst nationwide, and officials took money from other budgets to help cover the loss.

While federal officials haven’t detailed which areas of the country will see the worst of the cuts, the service has maintained it will determine needs on the basis of actual and projected fire activity. And after a busy fire season in 2012, meteorologists say Arkansas will likely have a normal summer this go-around, leaving some concerned the state will suffer from cuts this year and in the long-run.

In Arkansas, the state Forestry Commission tallied 2,148 fires that burned 34,434 acres in 2012, more than two-thirds of which were recorded during June, July and August, State Forester Joe Fox said.

But the numbers don’t accurately show what firefighters dealt with last summer because they were able to put out a lot of blazes before much damage was done, he said.

“Arkansas was a tinderbox,” he said. “Our guys were stretched thin. We had folks that worked as much as 50 hours straight, and that’s not safe. They were out there in their [fire-resistant] suits in 100-degree weather next to the fires. It’s difficult, demanding work.”

During the summer, Fox said, he kept an eye on the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, which measures forest-fire potential on a zero through 800 scale, with 800 signaling the most potential.

“For at least 10 weeks running, all eight [of our] stations were in the 700s,” he said. “That’s about as dry as Colorado was when they were having the huge fires.”

But nightfall worked wonders on the fires, as humidity rose, temperatures fell and the winds dropped, he said.

Tippin couldn’t say for sure what sparked the grass fire near Ola, but investigators leaned toward the mowers who had been cutting the grass on the side of the road earlier that day.

The fire chief recalled that no other fire official would send his entire fleet to fight the Ola blaze, just in case another fire broke out elsewhere.

“The wind was blowing pretty hard, and vegetation was dry and dead. It was just like gasoline was lying there,” he said. “Everyone was kind of sitting on needles.”

Forecasters have higher hopes for this year’s fire season as much of the state recovers from drought like conditions.

“The recent rain that we’ve had has really helped things, and so as for a severe wildfire season or summer right now, it’s not looking as bad,” said Julie Lesko, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in North Little Rock, adding that some weather patterns have changed, too.

For most of 2011 and 2012, the region was in a La Nina phase, which typically brings warmer temperatures and below-average precipitation to the southern U.S., she said. But the pattern began shifting in late 2012 to bring more neutral, seasonal “average Arkansas weather,” she said.

Federal officials said they’re tracking areas where fires will likely break out and will make “risk-informed decisions” on where to maintain the assets. The federal service’s assets - which currently include 13,000 firefighters, about 25 airtankers and hundreds of helicopters - are moved as needed.

The state Forestry Commission’s federal funding has yet to see sequestration cuts. But thecommission has already taken a blow due to less federal funding annually and low state timber severance taxes, Fox said.

Sequestration could make it more difficult for the state to maintain fire equipment and for rural fire departments to get necessary training. The cuts could also affect prevention programs, such as Firewise, a two-person team that helps rural communities defend their homes from fires, he said, adding that the state currently leads the nation with 115 Firewise communities.

Tippin expects the Western states will suffer the most from sequestration, but Arkansas could carry some of the burden, likely in manpower.

The commission lost 45 employees, mostly firefighters, last year after investigators learned it had dipped into federal grant money to pay salaries and boost the commission’s budget, according to news reports at the time.

The commission had suffered a $4 million shortfall after demand for timber dropped with the decline of the housing market in 2008.

The Forestry Commission’s budget comes from severance taxes on timber sales and from the sale of seedlings and state timber.

Some of the employees were rehired after the state Department of Agriculture, which manages the commission, moved about $550,000 from its budget from excess funds.

“They were in dire straits,” said state Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, author of Act 1391, which increased the timber severance tax by a nickel per acre. “This bill was to allow them to buy capital equipmentthey were needing to replace that they hadn’t.”

The tax is expected to bring in $700,000 annually, an amount that can cover the costs for three new bulldozers, Sample said. The bulldozers last about 15 years, and the commission has about 20 that are older than that.

“We’re not keeping up,” Fox said. “And we’ll have some help from the recent tax raise … but we won’t get the proceeds of that until October 2014.”

Legislators during the 89th General Assembly also increased the commission’s operating budget by 10 percent for the next two years, he said.Lawmakers know the commission’s importance - that rural Arkansans depend on it for fire protection, that they provide equipment for volunteer fire departments and that they also help during weather disasters - so they wanted to ensure it had enough to cover those expenses, Sample said.

“We have to operate on hard facts, and we don’t know how long the sequestration will last and what the effects will be,” Sample said. “If there is a need for [the state] to replace some federal money that [the commission] has been receiving, I’d imagine we’d take a very close look at those needs, and if at all possible, make some increases.”

As for now, Fox is crossing his fingers in hope the weather doesn’t change for the worsethis fire season.

“Knock on wood, but right now it appears that last year’s drought is broken, and we could be going the other way a little bit,” he said. “That has really helped us in fire danger, and it’ll change back, but I just don’t know when.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/28/2013

Upcoming Events