Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
HUNTINGTON — The huge forest fire near Price has died down substantially recently, but not before some private property owners got pretty heated up about firefighter tactics. Federal firefighters on the Seeley Fire did churn up some private property with bulldozers and backfires, and at least one property owner accuses them of doing it on private land to avoid damaging roadless areas in the national forest.
Forest Service officials have a completely different explanation, and they say they have bulldozed national forest land as well.
For the firefighters encamped in Huntington, things have turned much more favorable in the last few days, partly because of the weather, but also because they chose their ground on which to make a stand. And that's exactly why some private-property owners are concerned.
When a forest fire is big and moving fast like the Seeley fire two weeks ago, firefighters try to get well out in front and bulldoze a firebreak, setting backfires to eat up the fuel.
Dave Cunningham has to visit his investment property by Google Earth these days because he can't go back to see what they actually did to his property.
A couple of weeks ago, when the fire was about two miles away, he says the US. Forest Service told him they might have to bulldoze part of his land. He claims they told him they couldn't do the work in a roadless area of the national forest, closer to the fire, because there's a policy against bulldozers.
The issue to me is, why can't they do everything possible to fight the fire on national forest lands before it affects private lands?
–Dave Cunningham
"The issue to me is, why can't they do everything possible to fight the fire on national forest lands before it affects private lands?" Cunningham said. "They would set backfires on natural firebreaks, but they wouldn't create a firebreak with a bulldozer, in a roadless area."
Forest Supervisor Allen Rowley says there is no such policy. He says firefighters made their stand on private ground because there was just too much beetle-killed timber on federal land.
"Where you have the most fuel is where you have the most resistance to control," Rowley said. "The fire's hardest to put out."
He says the private land had different fuels: aspen, sagebrush, meadows and grasses.
Some property owners believe that situation reflects bad long-term forest management: private land was thinned and logged, making it safer.
The fire is not officially out, although smoke could not be seen as of Monday. It is likely to be weeks before the last firefighter goes home.
