Friday, March 29, 2024

Chelan County plans to update Community Wildfire Protection Plan

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WENTCHEE - Working in conjunction with Chelan County, the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have launched the process of updating the county-level Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). Local agencies and organizations in Chelan County have initiated a planning committee to complete CWPP as part of the National Fire Plan, National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, and Healthy Forests Restoration Act as authorized by Congress and the White House. The Chelan County CWPP will include risk analyses with predictive models indicating where fires are likely to ignite and how they may impact local communities and the environment.  

Northwest Management, Inc. has been retained by the DNR and BLM to facilitate meetings, conduct field inspections and interviews, develop vulnerability assessments, and collaborate with the committee to delineate mitigation projects. The planning committee includes representatives from local fire districts, cities and towns, Chelan County, Washington Department of Natural Resources, National Park Service, US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and others.

The intention of the project is to assess wildland fire risk in Chelan County and the local communities, then make mitigation recommendations that will not only help prevent wildfire ignitions from occurring but will also guide decision-makers towards creating a more fire-resilient Chelan County and provide for public wildfire education.  Some of the goals of this project are to improve awareness of wildland fire issues locally, identify high fire risk areas and develop strategies to reduce this risk, and improve accessibility of funding assistance to achieve these goals.

The planning committee will be conducting public meetings to discuss preliminary findings and to seek public involvement during the planning process during summer of 2018. A notice of the dates and locations of these meetings will be posted in local news outlets.  For more information on the Chelan County CWPP please contact Brad Tucker, Northwest Management, Inc., at 208-245-1920 or tucker@northwestmanagement.com.

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