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.