Southeast Thurston Fire to present Wildfire Ready event

Are you prepared for a wildfire?

The Southeast Thurston Fire Authority (SETFA) wants to make sure.

SETFA is set to host its first ever Wildfire Ready event Saturday, April 26, at the Yelm Community Center.
The free event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Attendees will learn tips on wildfire preparedness, including creating defensible space and how to stay wildfire-ready year-round.

Food and beverages will be available for purchase courtesy of Mi Pueblo. A kids’ bounce house will also be on site.

Kelly Corey, SETFA’s wildland coordinator and lead organizer of the event, hopes to raise awareness about the free services offered by SETFA as part of its partnership with the Washington state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Thurston Conservation District. After seeing other parts of the country devastated by wildfires, like the Pacific Palisades in California, Corey wants to ensure local homeowners and businesses are prepared if a similar event were to affect the county.

It starts with education.

Corey said the goal is to provide resources to homeowners and businesses in Yelm, Rainier and the surrounding area, “whether that’s (homeowner associations) wanting to get ahold of grants that the state offers to help build that resiliency part of their neighborhoods, or homeowners who have multiple acres that they want to have a survey done by us, that’s what this is about,” Corey said.

Especially as Western Washington experiences “bigger and bigger fires,” Corey added.

In 2024, SETFA officially responded to 52 fires within its jurisdiction, up from 42 fires in 2023 and 31 fires in 2022.

According to Corey, the event is, at least in part, a kickoff for Wildfire Ready Neighbors, a DNR program that offers homeowners a free survey to determine their unique Wildfire Ready Plan.

“We do surveys for homeowners and allow them to hear our feedback for free,” Corey said. “This is absolutely free; all of this stuff is. We go out, we do a survey of their home. We have a questionnaire that we go through, we build it all out. We go back, we submit that and then it gives them a PDF version of what we found, on top of what we talked about while we were there … so that they have something to reference during the springtime when they’re doing spring cleanup or in the fall after a hot summer and burn bans are no longer in place. They can prep their properties and their homes and things like that.”

Corey said the program even includes free surveys of tree farms and “health studies” of timber patches.

“That’s pretty huge for homeowners because usually you have to pay for that,” Corey said. “All that is included in this program that we’ve done with the Department of Natural Resources and the Conservation District.”
Corey called the program a game changer in education for wildfire preparedness.

A number of key local and regional stakeholders are scheduled to attend the Wildfire Ready Event, including the Thurston Conservation District, Thurston County Medic One, the Red Cross, the Washington State Department of Transportation, the City of Yelm, the City of Yelm Police Department, Thurston County Emergency Management, Puget Sound Energy and the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency.

Corey said that SETFA Fire Chief Mark King will open the 30-minute media portion of the event and introduce SETFA’s partnership with DNR. Other speakers include the Washington commissioner of public lands, Dave Upthegrove, Thurston County Commissioner Rachel Grant and Yelm Mayor Joe DePinto.

Live demonstrations will follow, including a small “ember house” that shows how embers travel, along with a modified home survey across the street from the community center.

“And then we’ll jump into some wildland demonstrations, throw in some hose packs, showing how we work off brush trucks, and then we’ll cut up a car,” Corey said.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” he added, saying that he expects the variety to draw citizens in and allow them to see what SETFA does on a daily basis.

Beyond that, the main emphasis is teaching homeowners how to build defensible space for their homes.

“I think that’s really what this is about,” Corey said. “It is education and just building that resiliency and protecting our communities.”

Corey described the area of Yelm and Rainier as a wildland-urban interface (WUI).

“Because there’s so much undeveloped land in between homes and properties alike throughout our area and our jurisdiction, we can’t ignore that there is a WUI presence,” Corey said. “And what that really means is the undeveloped land that is unoccupied in between homes — that is prime for major wildfire.”

“Our population is absolutely booming,” Corey said. “Again, it kind of leads us into that undeveloped land in between these housing developments and these pockets of fuel that are left behind and the problem with that is all those pockets of fuel back up to people’s fence lines.”

If a fence line catches fire, Corey said, so might a house that’s connected to it.

“If you get the right amount of winds and you get the right amount of embers, all of a sudden those little bit of leaves in your gutter (can catch) on fire because the embers can travel up to two miles on any given day with a five-mile-an-hour wind. That’s a problem,” he said.

In short, Corey wants to provide citizens with a contingency plan in case of a wildfire — or even in the event of an evacuation.

As part of the program, SETFA has purchased three Smokey Bear fire danger signs that it plans to have up before summer: one along state Route 507 entering Yelm from Pierce County, another along state Route 510 entering Yelm from the Nisqually-Lacey area, and a final along state Route 507 entering Rainier from Tenino.

“And that really captures all three major entry points in our district, and that allows people to understand where we’re at throughout the summer and what danger level we’re at,” Corey said. “So that way, people aren’t out starting bonfires in the middle of summer. That allows them to understand that there is a burn ban, there is a high-risk danger for that week. And it will be adjusted weekly as we see fit.”

Corey said the fire danger signs will be on demonstration at the Wildfire Ready Event; it’s all part of the Wildfire Ready Neighbors project.

“It didn’t cost the citizens anything,” Corey said. “It’s absolutely just part of us going above and beyond to help the citizens understand that we’re doing our part to educate and have that outreach for everyone.”

SETFA has asked its vendors and those interested to share the event on social media, reader boards, websites, and in print, and to pass it along to any organizations that can help promote.

“This is our big push to get citizens to sign up (for the program),” Corey said. “If citizens don’t sign up, we can’t come and do it.”

To learn more about Wildfire Ready Neighbors, visit https://wildfireready.dnr.wa.gov.

Check out the Southeast Thurston Fire Authority Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SEThurstonFire to learn more about the Wildfire Ready Event.