Jim Gray
With fire quickly approaching, fire management officer Jim Gray and his team of firefighters did everything they could to prepare the community of Orogrande, deep in the Nez Perce forest. He discusses the realities that both communities and fire officials must face during wildfires.
On Orogrande:
“We’ve set up pumps in all the streams; there’s an adequate supply of water here; we’ve run those around to sprinkler heads; and when and if the fire does come, we would basically fire those up; that will provide some additional protection to the structures by putting direct water on them, and then firefighters are going to leave, because this isn’t going to be a safe place if the fire gets here. And we’re certainly not willing to risk firefighters’ lives for anything that’s here, the trees or the community itself. We have to make those determinations, and it’s a difficult thing to do. We’ve been working closely with the community. We’ve told them if the fire does come, comes hard, this is probably not a defensible space and everyone needs to leave.”
On the future of fighting fires:
“Even though we have probably as many resources as we’ve ever had, the fires are large, they’re difficult to contain, we don’t have all that we need to do that, nor is our future holding that. We don’t think we’ll ever have enough firefighters to put some of these fires out because of the fuel conditions, because of these years when we set record indices for fire behavior and fuel moistures. It just simply can’t be done.
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