Summit: Fire managers have known best techniques for a decade

RENO - Leaders of a two-day fire summit concluded that most of the steps needed to prevent and combat catastrophic wild fires in the West were recommended 12 years ago.

From pooling local, state and federal firefighting efforts to developing rules for safer communities, Gov. Kenny Guinn's Fire Summit ended Thursday in agreement with much of the wildfire management report that the Nevada Association of Counties issued in December 1988.

''We're encouraging NACO to resist the urge to say 'I told you so,''' said Robert Ruffridge, regional manager for the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

''They have the opportunity to say that. They came up with a lot of good ideas. Unfortunately, most of those were not implemented,'' he told about 200 people attending the summit at the Peppermill Hotel-Casino.

One recommendation offered Thursday that goes further than the county report calls for developing statewide regulations mandating developers to build ''fire-safe'' communities with buffer areas to guard against fire.

''We have laws that require developers to disclose when they build in a flood plain,'' said Chris Vaught, a Forest Service worker. ''Somehow we need to disclose when someone lives in a hazardous fire area.''

Frank Siracusa, the chief of the Nevada Division of Emergency Management who helped host the summit, said statewide mandates would be considered.

''We're going to take every one of these recommendations seriously,'' he said.

''Everything I heard here is not rocket science,'' he said. ''Most of what I heard is nothing more than partnerships. Most of what I heard is reasonable and stuff that we should be doing already.''

A number of local governments in Nevada already require residents to build with fire resistant roofs, reduce wildland vegetation around their homes and maintain green landscapes to help reduce fire threats.

Areas such as Lake Tahoe, where homes are built in old-growth forest, have been aware of the dangers of the so-called ''urban interface'' for years, summit leaders said.

''A lot of it is easy, like don't plant bushes and things next to your house and if you have a dead tree, get rid of it,'' said Robert Hadfield, head of the Nevada Association of Counties.

The summit recommendations go beyond that to question whether any development should occur in the urban interface, Hadfield said.

The county group prefers local governments handle such regulations instead of issuing a statewide edict, he said.

''If you don't build a local consensus, a statewide law would not be effective,'' Hadfield said.

''If I had to do it over again, I would have had home builders and developers join us (at the summit) also because clearly we need to involve the private sector in planning, whether it's fire suppression or certainly in the area of deciding where we should be building homes,'' he said.

Gov. Guinn, a Republican, called the summit after wild fires burned a record 1.6 million acres of Nevada last year - an area the size of the state of Delaware.

At one point last August, 19,000 firefighters or 80 percent of the nation's federal firefighting forces were in Nevada. No one was killed but ranchers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prime range land and key wildlife habitat was destroyed.

''Let's face it, we lucked out,'' Hadfield said.

''There wasn't any other place burning up. Just think what would have happened if there were major fires in other places, like there are now while Nevada was burning up,'' he said.

Among other recommendations offered was the development of an Internet Web site to serve as a repository of information on fire rehabilitation efforts across the state, from maps of work projects to recommended seed mixes.

Summit participants also recommended:

- Additional training and equipment be provided to local fire departments and volunteer forces that serve as the first line of defense against wild fires;

- Develop uniform methods for determining losses caused by wild fires;

- Develop a comprehensive description of disaster relief programs available to ranchers and others;

- Seek new flexibility in the use of emergency funding;

- Establish the state Division of Emergency Management as the leader, or co-leader with the Division of Forestry, of efforts to coordinate local, state and federal firefighting, prevention and restoration efforts;

- Build state and local support for the Bureau of Land Management's Great Basin restoration initiative aimed at reducing fire risks and replanting grasses after fires.