SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz visited Spokane on Monday to check out the site of the Upper Cemetery Fire by Government Way.
That fire torched several acres on the edge of Spokane prompting Level 2 evacuations.
KREM 2 found out while touring behind the fire lines with the commissioner that it could have been worse.
Fire season has already been incredibly busy for firefighters across the state, especially in Eastern Washington. But on Monday, Franz made a trip to Spokane County to check out an area that showed that doing some work ahead of time can really make a difference.
According to Franz, timing is everything when it comes to fires. But when fighting a fire that only needs seconds to destroy, how do you get more time?
Franz says firefighters can get more time by being proactive.
"The sooner that we can make our forests and landscapes more resilient to fire, the more we can reduce these catastrophic fires that could have been this one," Franz said.
The fire Franz is referencing is July's Upper Cemetery Fire, which torched more than 40 acres and threatened several homes & a nearby school.
It also burned in an area that's part of the West Palisades Fuel Reduction Project.
Fire crews worked on the area, once in 2013 and then again this year, pruning several acres of trees of their lower limbs and reducing the fuel on the ground.
The difference between the treated area and an untreated section of the forest next to it proved to be staggering, according to Nick Jeffries, wildland resource planner with the Spokane Fire Department.
"This section of the fire that was burning was the heaviest, most intense, it was throwing the most embers onto the school in the homes down below," Jeffries said. "We just had a lot more success in the area that was treated, and that's why this is such an exciting little piece, because this section that was burnt was actually [at] less risk for everybody."
DNR said they've treated almost 800,000 acres of forest across Central and Eastern Washington since 2017, with the ultimate goal of treating 1.25 million acres across the state.
According to fire officials, this particular project has finished about 430 acres in the Spokane area. Spokane Fire hopes to work on another 500-1,000 acres over the next year.
But for now, fire officials hope to use this fire as a chance to learn more.
"Every time there's a fire that hits an area we've done a forest health treatment, we go back into that landscape to say, 'Did we get it right?'" Franz said. "What are the lessons to be learned that we can as we continue to learn about forest health and the restoration of these forests that fight these fires with us?"