Pioneer Fire outside of Stehekin, summer 2024.
Curious Chelan Valley residents and Chelan County Commissioners want to know the thoughts and actions that were taken by federal forest managers, plus the overall cost, in fighting the Pioneer wildland fire this past summer.
A debriefing on the fire had been set up by commissioner Tiffany Gering, but five days prior to the teleconference, Gering says federal agencies backed-out, reportedly saying that they wouldn't be attending.
"National Park Service and Forest Service basically said we don't know what the agenda is, " said commissioner Gering in updating her colleagues on the status of the discussion. "I think it made them nervous. I think they knew that with all of the electeds (elected officials) on this call, there was gonna be some frustrations expressed and a lot of hard questions asked."
"We've had a lot of constituents sharing what they saw throughout the Pioneer Fire and just how things things have drastically seemed to change in the last 30 years where fires are managed instead of put out," Gering shared. "I think we owe it to our constituents to still push to have that meeting, and at least be able to ask the questions that they have and share the frustrations that they did with us."
"We'd definitely would like to understand exactly what transpired here; is this any different than any other management practices they have elsewhere and lessons learned from this and where just exactly what you said, where the fire can be put out instead of managed over months and months," commissioner Kevin Overbay said. "There's millions of dollars that gets poured into that, there's a lot of resources, there's a lot of angst in regards to our constituency, loss of property and things like that. Loss of economic viability for the Stehekin community."
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