Transcript:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Last spring, a massive wildfire burned hundreds of acres at the Queens River Preserve in Exeter. It was the largest forest fire in Rhode Island since 1942, and it prompted the creation of a special legislative commission tasked with providing recommendations on proper forest management for fire prevention. We’re joined now by two guests to talk more about the challenges of forest fire prevention. Tee Jay Boudreau, Forest Deputy Chief for the State Department of Environmental Management. Tee Jay, thanks so much for the time.
Tee Jay Boudreau: Thanks for having me.
Hernandez: And Scott Barber, Fire Chief for the Town of Richmond. Scott, a pleasure, thank you.
Scott Barber: Thanks for having me also.
Hernandez: Tee Jay, I want to start with you. What are the factors that are exacerbating the risk of large forest fires in Rhode Island right now?
Boudreau: So a lot of them are environmental. Right now, for a number of years we’ve been dealing with drought-like conditions in Rhode Island. I think everyone’s aware of that. You know, we’re getting a lot of rain this year, but in years past and continuing on into those summer months, things can get dry. And plants need a lot of water to survive. We’re not really getting the precipitation that we normally do. That kind of exacerbates environmental factors that make things more difficult when you’re looking at fire risks. Making a forest a little bit less healthy raises the risks of fire damage. And when we do have fires, which we normally do in Rhode Island, they can get out of control and they can get bigger than they normally do.
Hernandez: I want to ask both of you on this one. I’m wondering what’s it like to battle a large forest fire here in Rhode Island. What are the challenges with our geography? Tee Jay, I’ll start with you. I mean, is it getting to the location, access to water? What are some of the challenges you see?
Boudreau: Yeah, those are big ones. Obviously, getting to the location, you know, everyone likes to put a fire out as fast as possible. And some of those locations are difficult to get to if they’re happening in the forests and deep into the woods. These aren’t fires that are happening on the sides of roads where you have fire extinguishers and you have fire hydrants for people to plug into. So, those sorts of factors are obviously part of it.
Hernandez: Chief Barber, you were on the ground last spring with that blaze in Exeter. First of all, we had to evacuate some homes. Just describe briefly what that was like tackling something like this compared to a house fire. It was the worst fire we’ve seen in decades. But at the same time, could it have been worse?
Barber: Absolutely. We were very fortunate things worked out the way they did with the Exeter fire. We could have very easily had homes threatened. I was actually assigned to the north division; that was William Reynolds Road, where the fire was headed. Fortunately, there was a wet area on the right flank and we had a strategically placed apparatus near most of the homes along that road. With the timing of the wind shift in the afternoon – we usually see a little bit of a wind change – it kind of played into our favor and we had ramped up enough equipment that we started pre-wetting that whole zone, and we did actually have some spot fires jump William Reynolds Road, but we had enough manpower that we were able to jump on them quickly. And it was later in the day. So everything worked out. There was a lot ongoing on that fire that people don’t even realize, with animal evacuations and the coordination with the state police. The Washington County Fairgrounds actually became the shelter they were starting to move animals to.
This situation last year should really serve as the wake up call. The weather patterns can change. Typically in April, we don’t see the higher temperatures and a low humidity. Last year we had temperatures in the eighties for a few days, the nineties, low humidity under 30% and high winds. Everybody’s aware of the windstorms that we seem to be having on a more frequent basis. You put all those together and you’ve got the perfect recipe to have this event. And I think Rhode Island has really become complacent with the fact that we haven’t seen a significant fire and now this shows that it can happen.
Hernandez: Yeah, interesting you say that. Tee Jay, according to the House commission that’s been examining forest management in the state, staffing levels at the forestry division at DEM have decreased by 75% since 1990. How has that reduction impacted their ability to address forest health?
Boudreau: Yeah, so it’s definitely affected us, obviously in a negative way. We don’t have as many people working on the grounds doing these state land management activities as we did in years past. We’ve gotten down to a pretty lean crew, and we do the best that we can do. Because of the media surrounding the fires that happened last year, it hasn’t been all negative for us. A lot of it has been obviously positive around the work that we did. Because of it, we’ve actually had two new staff employees that started working for us; one within our fire program and then one within our state lands management program. And, you know, I can’t pinpoint exactly, but it’s all in relationship to the support we get from our partners and then the recognition that there does need to be more people working in these activities.
Hernandez: Tee Jay, you’re on this special legislative commission, and they came out with a panel draft report. Just briefly, what are some of the recommendations on this draft report?
Boudreau: Yeah, that was a great opportunity for us to have these conversations. A lot of it was written in a way that was supporting recommendations to better work with partners. This was the first time last year that we used the National Guard in a generation. So how do we formalize those procedures? How do we work with our partners better to recognize risks within communities, working with planning boards, working with zoning boards, and kind of just getting the information that we have in our hands, the information that folks have in their hands within those communities, and how do we better formalize processes to make sure that when we are fighting these fires, we do it to the best of our abilities?
Hernandez: Chief Barber, I keep thinking about across the country wildfires are just becoming more common, but also they’re getting bigger. They’re more destructive and it’s just a challenge for departments and for states everywhere in dealing with this. This is going to be a problem for us. If you get to speak to lawmakers, what do you say to them about how we should be thinking about this issue moving into the next decade or so?
Barber: I’m a big advocate for the forestry department. It’s near and dear to me. You know, we need them. We need them as a resource, not just for the equipment, but the expertise to help us and train us. Our area down here in Richmond, we had a devastation from the gypsy moth infestation. The whole north end of our town looks like a wasteland. And so we have all this extra debris on the forest floor. And if we get the right conditions, you know, a fire is going to burn for days. And if we had lost homes or somebody had been injured in these other fires, I think you would have saw a whole different inquiry into trying to move things forward. So that’s why the fire service has really tried to come together and support our forestry division and say, look, these guys have been neglected. We want to support them. We need to have the legislators understand that over the years, their funding has been decreased, their staffing’s been cut. You know, we don’t expect it to change overnight with the flip of a switch, but start building towards that.
Hernandez: Scott Barber is the Fire Chief of the Town of Richmond. Tee Jay Boudreau is the Fire Deputy Chief of the State Department of Environmental Management. Tee Jay, Chief, I really appreciate the time. Thank you for the insight.
Boudreau: Thank you.
Barber: Thank you very much for the opportunity.
