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Wallowa County Chieftain
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FIRES
said.
The next day DeTro con-
fronted the of¿cial who said
he wouldn’t backburn and he
“said I didn’t understand the
difference between backburn
and back¿re,” DeTro said.
A backburn is suppose to
be relatively small, but the
area was not tied together by
¿re lines, he said. “We warned
them about the wind, but they
did it anyway and it got away
from them,” he said.
“Guys are getting way to
happy with their drip torch-
es (for backburning). If these
agencies have that kind of
attitude they might as well
back¿re to the Paci¿c Ocean,”
DeTro said.
One third of the 600,000
acres burned this year in the
Okanogan, Tunk Block and
North Star ¿res was caused by
backburning, he said.
Craig Vejraska, an Omak
rancher and former Okano-
gan County commissioner,
said agencies burned his pri-
vate timber, which is his bank
account, without asking per-
mission and just a week ago
burned what grass he had left
to complete a blackened area.
“It could have saved our
bacon and now we have 700
cattle looking for a home,” he
said.
“We should take the inci-
dent command away and give
it and the money to the Riv-
erside Fire Department. They
put out a hell of a lot more ¿re
than DNR,” he said.
He yelled at two USFS
of¿cials for being part of the
problem. Earlier they talked
about forest management and
they responded that was their
arena, not ¿re ¿ghting.
Dowd, of the USFS, didn’t
know anything about Scholz
and Vejraska’s claims. DNR
spokeswoman Sandra Kai-
ser said DNR staff contacted
Scholz but he was unable to
provide any names or details
about his claims. Scholz could
not be reached for comment,
but his wife, Bobbi, said she’s
not aware of DNR contact-
ing him. The ¿re had been
stopped, then DNR back-
burned in the wind despite
their pleas not too, destroying
their timber and shed full of
hay, she said.
“We can blame USFS all
we want. USFS is dysfunc-
tional, but who makes it so?”
asked state Rep. Joel Kretz,
R-Wauconda, and a ranch-
er. He said Congress has to
change forest management.
“We are in a critical situ-
ation right now where virtu-
ally every rancher is burned
out. We need every inch of
WDFW land made available
for grazing to maintain an in-
dustry,” Vejraska said.
Continued from Page A1
The panel cited multiple
examples of state Department
of Natural Resources and
8SFS-led interagency ¿re
teams refusing to attack ¿res
last summer, watching them
burn and in two cases back-
burning private timber and
pastures without permission
of the landowner or in direct
de¿ance of their pleas not to
do it.
Contacted later, USFS
and DNR spokespeople said
those agencies are working to
reduce ¿re loads by thinning
and prescribed burns.
Cathy Dowd, a USFS
Okanogan-Wenatchee
Na-
tional Forest spokeswoman,
said when the USFS doesn’t
attack a ¿re its because there
is no safe place from which to
do so.
“Folks may not think we
are doing anything, but we are
de¿nitely managing and mon-
itoring from the air and in oth-
er ways and looking for ways
to engage and suppress it,”
Dowd said. “All this year’s
¿res were suppression ¿res,
meaning the goal was to put
them out,” she said.
DNR Northeast Region
Manager Loren Torgerson
said it was the toughest ¿re
season the state has experi-
enced, that ¿re¿ghters risk
their lives daily and three died
doing so. “We saved many
people, homes and ranch-
es and earned their heartfelt
thanks,” he said.
He said DNR needs more
resources for preventative
thinning and ¿re ¿ghting and
urged the Cattlemen’s Associ-
ation to support that request.
Traditional ¿re suppres-
sion slowly begins behind
¿res and ¿re lines are built
along Àanks, Jim DeTro,
Okanogan County commis-
sioner and a smoke jumper
from 1967 to 1973, said at the
meeting.
“Eventually, the beast
wanes. They encircle it and
claim victory but only when
nature allows. But the drag-
on takes its toll. Fire¿ghters
earn overtime and hazardous
duty pay and they accept fail-
ure and loss with no regard to
how the loss could be prevent-
ed on the next event,” DeTro
said.
In Pine Creek, Gerald
Scholz and other ranchers
built a ¿re line with bulldoz-
ers that held, but agencies
wanted to backburn the area,
including private ground, De-
Tro said. They did so even
after they promised not to in
response to Scholz’s pleas, he
While state agencies are
asking for more money to
¿ght ¿res, Kretz said they
shouldn’t get any until they
perform.
In the 2014 Carlton ¿re,
“huge (public) resources sat
in town,” Brewster, while
Gebbers Farms bulldozers
and 180 Gebbers orchard
sprayers with water saved the
town, Kretz said.
“If you look at a map of
that ¿re, you see a big green
donut hole in the middle. Part
of it was private (Gebbers)
and part of it was public that
had been thinned. But the
big difference was Gebbers
crews got in there and actually
fought ¿re,” Kretz said.
“I went up on the ¿re with
Gebbers folks. We saw oc-
casional state rigs looking at
maps and smoke and when
they did see any smoke they
headed for town. Gebbers
headed toward the ¿re,” he
said.
“What you hear from the
state is that it’s catastrophic.
That they can’t ¿ght them.
They talk safety. You can’t go
in when its crowning out (in
tree tops) at 40 mph winds, but
watching Gebbers they didn’t
go into the teeth of the ¿re but
got ahead of it and didn’t put
in scratchy thin ¿re lines but
two D-8s (Caterpillar dozers)
side by side,” Kretz said.
“I saw a complete and utter
inability (by ¿re of¿cials) to
make a decision. They would
say you can put in a ¿re line
but can you use a D-4, not a
D-8? They’re worried about
environmental impacts, but
it’s a ¿re,” he said.
DNR of¿cials have a
“smug” attitude when ques-
tioned later, saying they’ve
heard stories and will have to
run them down to see if they
are true, he said.
Continued from Page A1
Each of the projects ultimate-
ly was sold at the Enterprise
Education Foundation dinner
auction, with all proceeds go-
ing to programs that support
arts and music. All proceeds
from the new book will go to
the foundation as well.
The 2011 project was am-
bitious, to say the least. The
students created and designed
the characters, built the sets,
took every shot of the tedious
stop-motion animation pro-
cess.
,t took ¿ve months to com-
plete the si[-minute ¿lm.
And those crafty kids?
They’re all sophomores in
high school now. Gilbert still
sees many of them, and some
are still into animation. But
the slow process of the craft
isn’t for everyone.
“At the time, a few said,
‘I’m never doing this again’,”
Gilbert said.
BOOK SIGNINGS
WALLOWOLOGY*
Joseph, 1-3 p.m. Dec. 4
MAD MARY’S
Joseph, 1-3 p.m. Dec 5
LOOKING GLASS BOOKS,
La Grande, 3-5 p.m. Dec 18
BOOKLOFT*
Enterprise, 1-3 p.m. Dec 19
%ooN Vigning to inFOude VKoZing of originaO ¿Om
“Wallowa Lake — The Real Story” also is available at
Book and Game in Walla Walla and Bookworm in Kenne-
wick. If you’re unable to support a local book store, you also
can purchase it at amazon.com
Gilbert said she’s applied
for the Made in Oregon desig-
nation for her new book, and
that it has been selling well.
“People seem to like it. It’s
a cute story with a little twist
at the end.”
Gilbert has scheduled sev-
eral upcoming book signings
at local book stores. A few
will include showings of the
original ¿lm.
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Courtesy of Joan Gilbert
From left to right: Author Joan Gilbert, Sebastian Hobbs, James Madsen, Rachel Frolander,
Reece Christman, Brett Greenshields and Cole Farwell pose in front of The Bookloft in
Enterprise on Friday. The teens are six of the 33 kids who worked on the original film in 2011.
When it comes
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A9
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