By Gordon Williams  

The Pacific Northwest must wrestle with two basic truths about wildfires: 

1. Because of climate change, wildfires are becoming more frequent and more destructive.
2. Forecasters are predicting an above-normal potential for fires in the Northwest between now and October. 

There is, practically speaking, no way to keep wildfires from spreading from one state to another. A fire near Spokane could spread into Idaho in a twinkling.   

Because the American Red Cross is spread thin responding to wildfires in the Northwest, it is changing its strategy for coping with them. Instead of each region developing its own strategy for responding to fires, the three regions that make up the Pacific Northwest will team up in an entity called the Wildfire Initiation Team (WIT) meant to bring about a better coordinated and more effective response to fires.  

The three regions involved with WIT are Northwest (Washington and Northern Idaho), Cascades (Oregon) and Idaho/Montana. The Red Cross order creating WIT says it will actively monitor and report on wildfire activity, mobilize responders in coordination with those regions, and evaluate and report on the potential for escalated response. By keeping this extra-close watch, the Red Cross should be quicker to respond when fire breaks out. By enabling all three regions to respond as one, more resources can be rushed faster to disaster scenes. The WIT is authorized to pre-position relief supplies throughout the three regions so that shelters can be opened and outfitted faster than is now possible.  

The overall commander of the team is Christopher Boyle, Division Disaster Director for the Red Cross Pacific Division, which includes the three participating regions. Headquarters for the program is in Kennewick WA, which is home base for the Northwest Region’s Central and Southeastern WA Chapter.  

Three Red Cross workers will provide the team’s day-to-day management. Alan Underkolfer of the Cascades Region is in charge of operations. When the team swings into action, he will be the incident commander. Autumn Gibson of the Idaho/Montana region is in charge of disaster workforce engagement. She has the job of finding bodies to fill the jobs the Red Cross must fill in disaster response. 

Jamie Gravelle of the Northwest Region is in charge of planning and implementation. Gravelle spent 15 years as a Red Cross staffer, much of the time as disaster program manager for the former Snohomish County chapter. An article in this blog four years ago described how in 2018 she helped lead the Red Cross response to two major disasters — hurricanes Florence and Michael —in little more than a week. 

Day-to-day operations of each of the three participating regions will be managed by a regional coordinator, each one on duty 24/7 for a two-week period. The first coordinator for the Northwest Region is Ryan McAllister, disaster program manager for the Northwest Washington chapter. He is on the lookout for volunteers to serve as subsequent regional coordinators and says he already has several candidates in mind.  

In the coordinator role, McAllister will keep watch on fire conditions in the four-state area. When fire breaks out, McAllister can expect a call for help from the Emergency Management office nearest the fire. That leads to calls for Red Cross shelter workers and requests for the supplies needed to make the shelters liveable.  

McAllister says in the event of a wildfire event while he is on duty, he would work in close cooperation with operations director Underkolfer, sending the director his requests for manpower and supplies. “He has the overall picture of everything going on in all four states,” McAllister says.

The Red Cross maintains a list of all potential shelters in Washington state, but it usually relies on local response teams to pick a shelter. Often it will first open a reception center where evacuees can assemble. Once they are assembled, McAllister explains, the response team can decide whether a shelter is really needed.  

While WIT hasn't been around long, it already has a few operations under its belt. Responders from Spokane were exhausted from this summer epidemic of wildfires. “We deployed four shelter workers to Spokane to back up the local responders," McAllister says.  

The team has also been involved in the mobile home park fire in Lakewood WA that destroyed nine trailers and caused two fatalities. Normally, the team would not get involved in a localized fire. Its mandate is specific to wildfires, leaving such incidents as single-family home fires to a response team from the local chapter. In this case, McAllister says, the fire that overwhelmed the trailer park began as a brush fire and got out of control.  

Finally, McAllister is asked about the current wildfire situation in his home region. “In Washington and northern Idaho region, we are currently monitoring 47 active wildfires,” he says. Any or all could explode into disasters that would put the new Red Cross strategy to the test.