Fuel treatments aided containment, limited destruction of Burdoin Fire

At about 2:30 p.m. on July 18, the Burdoin Fire sparked near State Route 14 just outside of Bingen, and eight minutes later, it had already crested the oak savanna hills beneath Courtney Road. Despite sustained 30 mile an hour winds blowing east, the fire continued pushing uphill, but it ran into an estimated 40 fuel treatments completed by USFS and DNR off Courtney and Atwood Road, just east of Coyote Wall, along the way.

When DNR’s Klickitat Fire Management Officer, Anthony Dobson, drove about two miles up Courtney and stopped near Rainbows End, he saw the treatments working. While the understory was aflame, canopies stood untouched.

“There wasn’t a ton of resources right here, because they didn’t need to be right here,” Dobson said on site. “This thing was just crawling through, not even all the way to the road in some spots.”

Further up Courtney, however, the fire had spotted across the pavement onto a different treated parcel and grew unchecked for 10 or so minutes, but very slowly. By that time, Dobson and another firefighter had unloaded a bulldozer and established a fuel break along the northern boundary, effectively turning part of the fire east.

“We’ve got half a dozen homes just behind us here, and it’s a very sinking feeling as an incident commander or fire manager when you’re running after a fire,” said Rose. “With the treatments, it gave them a chance to start flanking the fire and directing it."

In 2009, USFS thinned several parcels along Courtney Road, reducing the number of stems per acre from hundreds to about 50 or 60, Rose said, and returned years later to underburn the units with DNR’s assistance on two separate occasions. Together, the agencies have treated 9,000 acres in the National Scenic Area, and USFS cyclically treats 20,000 acres, Rose said.

A string of fuels reduction projects on private property mitigated the destruction, too. Like a different homeowner previously interviewed by Columbia Gorge News, Megan Murphy and her husband participated in DNR’s cost-sharing program to remove flammable material and create defensible space around their home.

The first project, completed in 2024 for a cost of $6,235, involved brush removal, moderate thinning, and pruning of trees on 1.3 acres, and DNR pitched $1,209. The Murphys wrapped up another similar project this past April, made possible through federal funds. About a month later, American Modern dropped their home insurance policy, an increasingly frequent occurrence throughout the Gorge.

The two were able to sign on with another company, but only by forfeiting coverage on their double-wide manufactured home, which the Burdoin Fire reduced to scrap metal. Their newer home, however, and the focus of prior treatments, still stands.

“We came at it with an understanding of forests and complexity, and active management in the best sense of those combinations,” said Murphy, who attended college at Yale for forestry. “To have a bureaucratic program that worked so well for a landowner in a rural community, I was blown away that it existed and got done.”

She added that the return on investment is “exceptional,” and thanks to the coordination amongst several neighbors, there’s now a continuous stretch of fuel treatments on private land off Courtney Road, not just public. But DNR may not be able to offer assistance at the same scale in the future.

“The funding for these types of programs, wildfire prevention through forest health, community resilience and preparation, was cut dramatically by the state legislature last year,” said Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s commissioner of public lands. “If they don’t restore these funds in January, we’re going to see more fires, bigger fires, and more cost to taxpayers.”

In 2021, state lawmakers passed House Bill 1168, committing $500 million to DNR for wildfire preparedness and response over the next eight years, and funding has largely kept up. The department received $130 million in the first two-year budget and $115 million in the following biennium, but only $60 million this time around.

Recently, DNR also learned that all federal grant money funneled through the cost-sharing program must go to contractors because of a new requirement, which could stall efforts in Klickitat County, where the majority of homeowners do the work themselves. Upthegrove reiterated how unwise cutting DNR’s cost-sharing program would be, considering the positive benefits.

“No one disagrees that disaster preparedness and prevention is a core, basic function of government, and it saves lives, saves homes, and, yes, saves money in the long run,” Upthegrove said. “This will continue to be DNR’s top legislative priority.”