{"id":28086,"date":"2017-03-16T12:19:01","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T17:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=28086"},"modified":"2017-03-16T12:29:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T17:29:44","slug":"as-state-budgets-falter-oklahoma-turns-to-other-states-to-fight-its-most-dangerous-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2017\/03\/16\/as-state-budgets-falter-oklahoma-turns-to-other-states-to-fight-its-most-dangerous-wildfires\/","title":{"rendered":"As State Budgets Falter, Oklahoma Turns to Other States to Fight Its Most Dangerous Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_28087\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28087\" alt=\"Guthrie Fire Chief Eric Harlow.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station058_WEB.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station058_WEB.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station058_WEB-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station058_WEB-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station058_WEB-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Guthrie Fire Chief Eric Harlow.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Crews have worked for more than a week to contain a massive wildfire that has torched more than a thousand square miles and killed one person and thousands of head of livestock in northwestern parts of Oklahoma. State budget cuts mean Oklahoma increasingly depends on other states to fight its largest and most dangerous wildfires.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/312744420&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->A week after the fire started, state forestry director George Geissler oversaw the state\u2019s response at a makeshift operations center at the Woodward County Fairgrounds.<\/p><p>\u201cIt&#8217;s got multiple fires, it&#8217;s got multiple communities and has all these different fire departments and jurisdictions going in and has hundreds of people on it,\u201d he said. \u201cThat&#8217;s a complex situation to deal with.\u201d<\/p><p>The first responders were volunteer firefighters, rural fire departments and a small contingent of expert wildfire teams from Oklahoma Forestry Services. But a few minutes after our interview, Geissler turned over control to a team from Louisiana.<\/p><p>\u201cA team like this comes in with almost 60 members immediately,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd for us that would be almost half of our agency \u2014 we just don&#8217;t have the number of personnel to pull this off.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_28089\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28089\" alt=\"Haze from the March 2017 Northwest Complex fire on the horizon near Seiling, Okla.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station010_WEB.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station010_WEB.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station010_WEB-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station010_WEB-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station010_WEB-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Haze from the March 2017 Northwest Complex fire on the horizon near Seiling, Okla.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>The ranks of Oklahoma\u2019s wildfire response unit have thinned, state human resources data and interviews with agency officials show. The firefighting force itself is down 15 percent in recent years, and Geissler has been unable to replace those experts due to budget cuts from state legislators and a smaller pool of revenue drained by low oil prices and tax cuts.<\/p><p>The Forest Service\u2019s umbrella agency, Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry, took an 11 percent cut last year, and state funding dropped to $20.3 million from $29.2 million \u2014 about one-third \u2014 between 2008 and 2016, state budget data show.<\/p><p>Geissler says relying on out-of-state fire crews to fight Oklahoma wildfires can be more expensive, and a lot less effective. One reason is that contract firefighters aren\u2019t on-call to be staged if severe fire conditions are forecasted, and are only brought in after a big fire breaks out.<\/p><p>It took several days for contract firefighters to assemble and arrive to fight the March 2017 wildfire \u2014 known as the Northwest Complex Fire \u2014 which was 83 percent contained by March 16, according to a forestry service update. The state has to pay those teams, and spend money feeding and housing them, Geissler says.<\/p><p>\u201cThe other thing that you lose is the stuff that all of our firefighters do when they&#8217;re not fighting fires, which is work with the fire departments on training,\u201d Geissler says.<\/p>\n<h3>Rapid growth, rising risk<\/h3><p>Guthrie Fire Chief Eric Harlow runs a city fire department, but his crew fights a lot of wildfires throughout Logan County, which has a hazardous combination of grasslands and populated neighborhoods.<\/p><p>\u201cWe refer to it as the wildland-urban interface,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s where those previously unpopulated and wild areas are now seeing rapid growth in the number of homes and housing additions.\u201d<\/p><p>Researchers say <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/climate-impacts\/climate-impacts-great-plains\">climate change <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/climate-impacts\/climate-impacts-great-plains\">increases wildfire potential<\/a> in Plains states like Oklahoma. State emergency planners say the hazard increases with population growth and periods of drought.<\/p><p>The Guthrie Fire Department relies on Oklahoma Forestry Services to help it fight wildfires, but the agency also provides specialized training so city fire crews like this can better fight wildfires on their own. Harlow said the state\u2019s expertise on fire behavior, terrain and tactics is unmatched in Oklahoma.<\/p><p>\u201cThat knowledge \u2026 is critical because it\u2019s not training that we normally get,\u201d Harlow says.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_28088\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28088\" alt=\"A wildland fire expert with Oklahoma Forestry Services briefs an out-of-state crew on the status of the March 2017 Northwest Complex Fire, which consumed more than thousand square miles and killed one person in Oklahoma.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station025_WEB.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station025_WEB.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station025_WEB-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station025_WEB-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2017\/03\/20170315-guthrie-fire-station025_WEB-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A wildland fire expert with Oklahoma Forestry Services briefs an out-of-state crew on the status of the March 2017 Northwest Complex Fire, which consumed more than thousand square miles and killed one person in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Rain, revenue<\/h3><p>John Yoder, an economist at Washington State University and expert on the economics of wildfire management, says wildfires have proven perennially vexing for local, state and federal officials.<\/p><p>\u201cWe either invest in reducing risk before fires happen, or we make decisions about how to fight them once fires start,\u201d he says.<\/p><p>Yoder says that balance is different for every state\u2019s particular environment or budget situation. He says money spent on training, prevention and preparation like Oklahoma Forestry Services\u2019 programs, is only effective if it\u2019s spent before a bad fire season.<\/p><p>George Geissler, the state forestry director, says that can be a tough sell for state lawmakers and budget writers because such \u201cfires don&#8217;t happen all the time.\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cWe can go and get rainy periods where, for a year, you don\u2019t have a big fire,\u201d he says.<\/p><p>Those rainy periods often nourish grass, trees and vegetation that become fuel for future wildfires \u2014 that\u2019s a major reason the current fire in northwestern Oklahoma and southern Kansas is so large. But fewer wildfires in those wet years, can mean the danger isn\u2019t on the minds of legislators when they\u2019re setting state funding priorities.<\/p><p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a really tough conversation,\u201d Geissler says. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to forget.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crews have worked for more than a week to contain a massive wildfire that has torched more than a thousand square miles and killed one person and thousands of head of livestock in northwestern parts of Oklahoma. State budget cuts mean Oklahoma increasingly depends on other states to fight its largest and most dangerous wildfires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":28087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[679,614,590],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28086"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28097,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28086\/revisions\/28097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}