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Lewis County’s Division of Emergency Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the state Department of Natural Resources will host an informational public meeting to speak on last summer’s Goat Rocks Fire in the Packwood Community Hall from 6 to 7:30 p.m. May 3.
The community building is located at 13096 U.S. Highway 12, Packwood. Speakers will update the public on the status of the Goat Rocks Fire, plans for fire recovery work, temporary road and trail closures, community resilience and firewise safety, and wildfire prevention techniques.
On April 29, 2022, a similar meeting was held, where Fire District 10 Chief Lonnie Goble said it was no longer a question of “if” a big fire was coming to Packwood, but “when?”
Sure enough, after a lightning strike in early August, thousands of acres of wilderness burned in the Goat Rocks Fire late last summer and fall, with one lip of the blaze less than 2 miles from the nearest residential area.
As was stated in last year’s fire safety meeting, the biggest determinant of a house’s fate in a fire is the last 100 yards before the structure, and that even in recent major residential-area fires, many houses were spared because they took those “firewise” steps early on.
Homeowners as individuals or in groups should be visiting firewise.org to learn more about the steps they can take to protect their homes, according to Goble and others from the meeting.
This year’s meeting on May 3 will likely touch on many similar subjects, as well as the status of the fire, which is not guaranteed to be fully extinguished, even after a winter of snowfall and rain.
Beyond forest service roads and trails in the Goat Rocks Wilderness and Gifford Pinchot National Forest — the borders of which meet right about in the path of where the fire swelled during a hot weekend in early September — the fire also closed U.S. Highway 12 and caused evacuations.
Fortunately, no serious injuries or damage to man-made structures were reported from the fire, which covered Packwood in a thick blanket of smoke for nearly two months. As fire seasons continue to increase in severity in Western Washington, it is likely forest-side communities such as Packwood will be bracing for these events earlier each year. After a flight over the fire’s path last fall, Goble estimated that only a few dozen acres of trees had been completely torched, despite the fire’s path covering more than 6,000 acres by mid-October.
According to the Gifford Pinchot’s interim ranger for the Cowlitz Valley District at the time, some stands in those patches of wilderness were estimated to have trees that were over 600 years old, according to research from carbon dating and native oral history.
