Bigfork gets new fire grant
The Bigfork Volunteer Fire Department
has secured a nearly $118,000 grant from the Montana Department of
Natural Resources and Conservation to mitigate fire danger on local
properties abutting national forest lands.
The two-year grant is designed to help
reduce fire fuels on lands in the Bigfork, Ferndale and Swan Lake
rural fire districts.
“It’s a positive for the community. It
will put some people to work,” Rick Trembath, owner of Flathead
Forestry and Fire Consulting, said of the grant. “The overall
result is that when we have fires, there will be less home
loss.”
This isn’t the first grant from the
federal National Fire Plan that the department has received. The
Bigfork and Ferndale fire departments were given a grant for about
$240,000 in 2004 and additional grants of $20,000 and $95,000 in
2005 and 2007, respectively. Those grants lasted five years and
helped reduce fire risk for 300 acres in the Bigfork area. This new
grant is of the same nature, but specifically targets properties
that are adjacent to federal lands, Trembath said. The grants are
aimed at reducing the potential wildfire risks to wildland-urban
interface communities.
“Fire mitigation work is a continuous
program,” Trembath said. “It doesn’t start and stop. Really this is
the time to be proactive. It’s not during a fire or drought season.
It takes a long time to really get a community firewise.”
The department will host educational
and open house sessions periodically at the fire hall throughout
the course of the grant. With the grant, qualifying property owners
provide a 25-percent match for the grant dollars, which can be in
the form of expense incurred or in-kind work.
Mitigation work can include actions
such as thinning, pruning, brush piling, chipping and vegetation
management. All are designed to help reduce wildfire risk.
Trembath, whose company has entered
into an agreement to help implement the grant, welcomes calls from
any homeowner, neighborhood or association to have him come out,
explain the principles behind the work and access the properties’
needs, though not all will be eligible for grant funds to complete
the fuel reduction work. Those interested in finding out more about
the grant and whether their property is eligible should call
837-4590.