Ridge Creek Fire strategy and safety

ATHOL — Community members showed up strong Sunday to ask questions and get other information from emergency response team members working on the Ridge Creek Fire near Hayden Lake.

Hosted by first responders, the community meeting took place at Athol City Hall.

“We understand that fire of this nature is very concerning to communities,” Deputy Incident Commander Chris Woods said. “One of the best ways that we think we can help with that, besides engaging with the fire, is to provide timely and accurate information.”

Attendees gathered information on how to be prepared and support fire suppression efforts in their own homes and neighborhoods.

“It’s been awesome,” Michelle Behrens said.

Not about the fire, but about her own neighborhood's fire readiness. They participate in Firewise USA, a voluntary program that provides a framework to help neighbors get organized, find direction and take action to increase the ignition resistance of their homes and community.

Behrens attended the meeting with fellow local Firewise participants to discuss what they can do to combat the blaze. In the past few years, they’ve removed any fire fuel and made defensible space around their homes, and applied for grants to protect their land on the edge of state forests.

The more information they had from response teams, the more secure they felt with their own fire plans.

The Incident Response Team was assembled from across the country with individuals with specific and specialized skills. Members addressed the community directly on the status of battling the flames on Ridge Creek, Hayden Creek and Hell’s Canyon.

“Our overall strategy is to corral this fire away from communities,” Woods said. “The challenges we’re facing are steepness and access.”

Priorities in the Ridge Creek Fire include private industry lands and timber around the fire and, most importantly, homes to the north or south.

“We talked about values,” Operations Section Chief Joe Alyea said. “Values are important to us. We have limited resources: where are the values and how do we protect those values?”

Alyea outlined the strategic targets for land crews working on the fire: where ridges make natural fire breaks, where air support can be the most effective and what the plan is for the most vulnerable hillsides on the northwest side of the fire.

“We really anchored in off the bottom canyon using a mix of handline and mechanized equipment … to really start with blocking the bottom side of Hell’s Canyon,” Alyea said.

As of Sunday, the fire was 15% contained with over 2,400 acres burned in fiercely steep terrain. The focus was working safely within the environment to contain the flames.

Incident Meteorologist Shane Eagan didn’t predict help from the weather in fighting the fire, citing three key factors that can increase a fire’s strength in this week’s forecast.

The week will likely see extremely dry, hot and relatively windy weather that could assist the flames and make work tougher for ground crews.

Wind can be good news for air quality, though. Air Quality Specialist Jenn Croft showed the community maps of the smoke from the flames largely traveling to Northern California and away from the county. In the evenings, smoky air can still settle into the Hayden Lake Basin.

“We help identify at what point, even those of us who think we’re invincible, need to start taking better care of ourselves,” Croft said.

Croft asked people to follow alerts at fire.airnow.gov on air quality to plan when to close windows or reduce activity.

Evacuations are currently at “Ready,” with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office prepared to evacuate, but no current evacuation orders, Lt. Zachary Siffords said.

The goal is to be able to give people at least one day's notice to evacuate, though conditions can always change suddenly. A full day’s notice would ideally give people time to evacuate their livestock, Office of Emergency Management’s Tiffany Westbrook said.

“The key to success has been our coordination with local partners,” Woods said. “We are super impressed with our partners: the Office of Emergency Management, the sheriff’s offices and local fire protection districts.”

Woods was deeply impressed with the local response teams and their coordination with the specialists and emergency response team that has been called in to address the fire and the impacts of the fire from every angle.

“I do want to thank the local cooperating agencies. They are outstanding. We can’t get over how good they are,” he said. “We’re not accustomed to that.”

The crowd applauded in agreement.