How Roslyn became a model for community-led wildfire management

Evacuation routes have become a big topic of discussion in Upper Kittitas County. If a fire were to prompt an evacuation on a busy recreation weekend, over 10,000 people might need to leave via State Route 903, he said.

“If there’s a fire, that’s the only way in and it’s the only way out,” Craven said.

The escape-route situation is a large reason that Doug and Susan Johnson leave during fire season. Members of the citizens’ committee, including Susan, have recently been focusing on escape routes.

“We’re in extreme danger,” Doug Johnson said, recalling that people died in their cars while attempting to escape the Camp Fire in Paradise, California.

A changing climate, and community

On Aug. 9, lighting strikes caused three fires between Lake Kachess and Lake Cle Elum.

Over 150 personnel were able to contain the fires to 23 acres. But it was a sobering reminder of the ever-present, and growing, danger of living in the 21st-century Cascades because of climate change.

Johnson built his home out of cedar in the 1980s, in a time when Upper Kittitas County wasn’t known for fires. He is grateful for the fire safety provided by his metal roof, which was originally built to withstand heavy snow, something he said he doesn’t see as much of anymore, and one of the things that initially drew him to the Cascades.

“In the 50 years I’ve lived here, it’s just a completely different climate. We never had smoke. We had tons of snow. Snowfall is anemic now,” he said.

Though Johnson was a schoolteacher in Cle Elum for many years, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the summer of 1976.

“They told us, ‘You’re not going to be fighting fires here. We call this the asbestos district, because it never burns.’”

Much has changed.

Suncadia, a growing getaway

South of Roslyn, not far over the hill from the Johnsons’ house, Phil Hess looks out the window of the newly renovated Suncadia Lodge. Perched above the Cle Elum River, it offers a spectacular view of the 6,000-acre resort.

Suncadia’s master plan is for 3,500 homes, and it’s only halfway built, said Edward Simpkins, director of Suncadia Community Associations. It’s expanding to soon include a new commercial area and a 55-and-older community called the Uplands.

Hess is a longtime forester, recently honored as Washington State Forester of the Year by the Washington Farm Forestry Association. He worked for many years for Boise Cascade, out of Yakima.

Though Hess has only recently taken over Craven’s responsibilities, he has worked with Suncadia since the start. Craven said Hess is “a wealth of knowledge.” One of his first assignments in the 1990s was to create a fuel break around the perimeter of the entire 6,000-acre property, Hess said. A large portion of the land is held in a conservation trust, preserving much of the pine forest.

Today, Hess has contract crews constantly thinning and clearing areas to reduce fuels on Suncadia property, and they are able to treat about 100 to 200 acres a year.

But risk remains for any community in the trees.

“Fire resiliency does not mean fireproof,” Hess said. “The forest is going to burn. The decision space we have, is how it will burn.”

Suncadia spends a half-million dollars on forest health and fire resiliency work every year, and is an official Firewise USA community, Simpkins said. Suncadia is also a member of the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition, and donated the chipper that the Upper Kittitas County Fuels crew uses.

“We’re doing everything we can to avoid what happens in Northern California. That’s not going to happen here,” Hess said.

An example for others

Rose Beaton, a community resilience coordinator with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, believes what Roslyn and its residents are doing to prevent fire should be an example for the West.