Snohomish County releases draft of wildfire protection plan

EVERETT— Snohomish County released a draft of its first Community Wildfire Protection Plan on Monday and is now hoping to receive community feedback through July on how to best prepare and mitigate wildfire risks.

The 88-page document includes takeaways from previous surveys, analyses of wildfire risks throughout the county and resources for people to engage with wildfire resiliency work.

Community members can access the draft on the county’s website and submit feedback to the Department of Emergency Management through a survey, listed online under a link to the document.

After going through public comments, DEM staff will send the plan to the state Department of Natural Resources before sharing it with County Council for approval.

“Wildfire preparedness and resiliency is critical for our county with much of our land being forested and a rapidly growing population,” Snohomish County Councilmember Megan Dunn wrote in an email on Monday. “I appreciate all the attentive work of the department, volunteers, public and dedicated staff.”

‘It is a sign of things to come’

Wildfires aren’t a new phenomenon, especially in the Pacific Northwest. But wildfire risks continue to increase as populations grow, more people move into forested areas and climate change continues to create hotter, drier conditions.

With the protection plan, the county hopes to give tailored, trusted resources for community members to rely on for anything wildfire-related, from individual management guidance to learning where the nearest evacuation route is from your home.

In 2019, the state Department of Natural Resources created a 10-year Wildland Fire Protection Strategic Plan, laying out strategies and goals for agencies and populations across Washington to work toward and prioritize. County-scale plans play into the state’s goals with the hope that counties will have their own specific documents to rely on.

“It’s great to see another county in Western Washington taking the initiative to complete a [protection plan],” DNR community resilience coordinator Kirk Troberg wrote in a text Monday. “It’s a great tool for the public to understand the wildfire risk in the county, and what’s being done to mitigate that risk, as well as what resources are available for the public.”

Currently, over 27 counties across Washington have community protection plans, and Snohomish County hopes to join that list by the end of this year.

“We’re getting these heat waves that are just kind of year after year, stressing out our trees. We need to be prepared for big fires,” said Lucia Schmit, director of emergency management for Snohomish County. She added that the 2022 Bolt Creek Fire, which burned over 14,000 acres across Snohomish and King counties, was a major wake up call to the region’s new reality.

“Historic trends are showing that Bolt Creek Fire was not an anomaly. It is a sign of things to come,” she said.

‘We want people to tell us what is missing’

Last summer, the county conducted a survey to understand communities’ needs, concerns and preparedness levels. Although the survey was anonymous, 60% of the 1,110 participants provided contact information to receive future outreach information, reflecting a “strong interest in bolstering community wildfire resiliency,” the report states.

While the survey indicates an interest in the topic, 43% of participants answered they were unsure of what to do to their properties to make them more defensible to flames.

“I hope people are able to read it and see some of the things that they can do to reduce the risk around their homes. But if people leave it, saying, ‘I still don’t understand what I’m supposed to do,’ we want them to tell us that,” Schmit said. “We want people to tell us what is missing.”

The protection plan draft provides guidance from the National Fire Association explains the zones of defense for a home or building. It recommends removing all vegetation from the immediate zone within the first 5 feet from structure walls. The association also encourages property owners to thin branches, keep lawns short and space out larger trees or plants in the intermediate zone, up to 30 feet away from structures.

‘Folks are primed to talk about this issue’

While individual efforts are important, the preparedness plan points toward the need for widespread, interagency government and agency collaboration to systematically plan for wildfires.

Since 1900, average temperatures across the Puget Sound region have increased by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit and are projected to hit 5.5 degrees warmer by the 2050s. The county is expected to experience eight to 20 days of extreme heat per year at that point, according to a 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Roughly 130,000 people live in forested areas in the wildland-urban interface within Snohomish County, and past fires like Bolt Creek have demonstrated the need for polished, effective emergency protocols.

“I think anyone coming back from skiing at Stevens Pass can tell you the transportation challenges [for] some of our mountain corridors,” Schmit said. “We really want to make sure that we are leaning forward, giving people as much notice as we can, and making sure we’re getting that word out to the communities.”

The county has worked with local fire departments and Refugee & Immigrant Services Northwest, creating a trusted network for information to spread throughout rural communities.

There “are communities that, understandably, are mistrustful of government right now, and so if we tell them to go somewhere, they might not do it. But if they hear it from other people within their community, they will be more likely to respond” to evacuation warnings, Schmit said.

Before the Bolt Creek Fire, the county partnered with Sky Valley Fire District to create its own community wildfire protection plan, which helped during the fire, said Scott North, communications manager for the emergency management department.

“The spring after Bolt Creek, we had a community meeting in Gold Bar, like in the middle of a week in April. We had a couple hundred people show up,” North said. “Folks are primed to talk about this issue in places where they’re already starting to have the effects felt.”

Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.

Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.