Fighting Fire With Trust
What is the best way to fight sprawling fires that have the potential to threaten homes, property, important wildlife habitat and lives? With trust. By being proactive and working collaboratively, HCWC provides a platform to share input from diverse stakeholders and establishes open channels of communication.
HCWC was created for just that purpose. Local leaders decided that the best way to fight megafires—which are increasingly more common and certainly threaten lives and livelihoods in the agriculturally dependent economy of Harney County—was to work together. As one collaborative volunteer shared, “the collaborative is vital to the success of preventing, suppressing, and restoring the effects of megafires.”
Many of the participants that make up the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative. These are the approximately 50 individuals who participated in a July 2022 range tour in the Stinkingwater Mountains.
Prevention, Suppression and Restoration
The HCWC focuses its work around three phases of wildfire management: prevention, suppression, and restoration.
- Prevention is the first step, comprising various steps of fire risk reduction by minimizing the potential incidence and impacts of megafires throughout the region.
- Suppression entails the communication, coordination, and integration of actions taken to put fires out in both initial and extended outbreaks.
- Restoration is reconditioning the landscape so it will be more resistant to catastrophic fires in the future and more resilient in its recovery post-fire.
HCWC has lots of resources in the megafire fighting tool box, with the goal of utilizing the collaborative process to make the most of the minds at the table and the tools at their disposal to develop strategies for reducing and managing wildfires in Harney County.
*Behind the link above and the link to your right find for the article: Tools In The Megafire Fighting Box.
