Saving West from fires carries big tab

At the height of the Hayman Fire, when wind drove the flames toward the Denver suburbs, pilots dumped planeload after planeload of fire-snuffing slurry. The price: $8,000 per drop.

Now, thanks in part to those costly plane runs, the fire is contained, with remnant swirls of wood smoke wisping just over the first of the ridge Rockies near metropolitan Denver.

But as firefighters break camp, a different kind of fire-related drama is beginning: Paying for what could become the most expensive fire season ever.

The tab for fighting the Hayman Fire alone exceeded $1 million a day as the blazing inferno ripped through 138,000 acres of woodlands in a nearly month-long burn.

Multiply those costs – the fire season stretches through fall, and as of early July some two dozen big blazes were active in nine western states – and it becomes clear that wildfires are suppressed not only by airplane-drops and crews with shovels, but also by a deluge of taxpayer money.

Politicians won't shut off the money spigot if fire crews go over budget. But as costs rise, so are official efforts to keep them in check.

In fact, while fire budgets have often been viewed by critics as blank checks from taxpayers, frontline officials say that refinements in accountability have increased over the years to the point of minutiae.

From the amount of nitrogen allowed in flame retardant down to the portions of bread that firefighters eat, there are government specifications that apply to almost every aspect of battling wildfire.

Such efforts, though, can go only so far. Costs are ultimately determined by the scope of the wildfires themselves, and this year has started off big.

The US Forest Service, a branch of the Agriculture Department, is warning that it could soon exhaust the $385 million earmarked to fight wildfires this year. Officials from five land-management agencies at the Interior Department also believe they may burn through their $170 million fire budget by the end of July. Then the government will start issuing IOUs ultimately to be reconciled by Congress.

The final total for the year, experts figure, could top $1 billion.

"Although the budgeted money runs out, it doesn't mean we stop fighting fires. We never stop," says Andy Smith, chief of budget and evaluation at the National Interagency Fire Center.

The costs begin with feeding, equipping, and paying a firefighting force that, this year, is 18,000 strong.

But other expenses are, literally, sky high.

The aerial assemblage this year of nearly 50 bombers to drop flame retardant, plus transport carriers and 400 helicopters, swells expenses. But the aerial armada is also seen as indispensable.

"Aviation is the biggest cost driver," Smith says. "But without it, we're not accomplishing much."

The payback is obvious in cases like the Hayman Fire, fought largely in the Pike National Forest. Current estimates put the blaze's cost at more than $30 million. Another $25 million is anticipated to shore up and replant scorched hillsides. But, the investment is considered a bargain, given the value of the property saved – even though 133 homes and hundreds of other structures did burn.

In Boise, Idaho, Linda Bass with the Bureau of Land Management oversees the largest of 11 federal firefighting equipment warehouses in the US, with over $15 million in inventory. Recently, the so-called Great Basin Area Fire Cache lent a hand when resources in Colorado and Arizona became stretched.

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