NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Democratic Rep. Jason Probst served on the Governor's Wildfire Task Force along with Hutchinson Fire Chief Steven Beer. Probst said they heard from a wide cross-section of Kansans during the task force's work.
"We heard from a variety of people," Probst said. "We heard from private landowners in western Kansas who had been affected by wildfires. We heard from fire chiefs across the state, from firefighters, we heard from land managers. We heard from the MESONET system, the weather information system. We heard from emergency management. We heard from a number of people, tried to bring in as many different groups who have a stake in the state's wildfire response as possible."
Probst praised Beer's work on getting a local task force together even before seeing what the state might want to do.
"Ultimately, there's a number of recommendations that came out across three areas, prevention and mitigation, response and recovery," Probst said. Underneath those, there's a number of recommendations. On the mitigation part, which I think is really important, we largely talk about, what can we do to reduce the fuel load? Especially these red cedars that keep growing and taking root in different parts of the state. They add fuel to the fire. They are difficult to contain. They are high heat. Universally, the fire departments said, this is a huge issue."
The hard part in any wildfire mitigation plan is balancing the rights of people to do what they want with their own property and the rights of those near them not to have to deal with an increased risk of damage to their property because of neglect or a lack of means to fix problems from neighbors.
"If I do something on my property that starts a fire that ends up damaging someone else, I've violated the contract I sort of have with the community and the people around me that I live with," Probst said. "Likewise, if I allow cedar trees to go unchecked and it's hard for firefighters to get in there, or the fire gets hard to battle because of that and the fire grows because of that, I've also violated that. We have conflict there, because we don't want to go in, and we won't go in and say to somebody, you have to do X, Y and Z, because this might be a threat to someone else, but we do have to do some education. We have prescribed burning councils. We have a lot of wildfire education components. One of the recommendations is to put more money and resources into those and to make sure that more people are aware of those. We do have an obligation, I think, to do what we can to mitigate these fire dangers for firefighters and for our neighbors."
It is anticipated that legislation will be considered in the 2024 legislative session based on some of the task force conclusions. The session gavels in Jan. 8, 2024.
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