On a dry day in mid-June, a 13-person crew slashed down small trees, limbs and bushes outside of a home near Roslyn, Washington.

The workers, part of the Kittitas County Fuels Crew, are “firewising” the residential lot. They throw the brush into a wood chipper and strategically cover parts of the property with the mulch.

“We’re building a good buffer around the communities through hardening the landscape,” said Beau Foster, lieutenant with Kittitas County Fire Protection District 6. “We’re pushing back the timber a little bit to the point where now we have an area that we can check the fire up or hold it.”

The idea is that if a fire comes through, it would burn the woodchips or “fuel” the crew laid out with less intensity than if it were spreading through trees and shrubs. This gives firefighters more time and a place to control the fire. The work can prevent a fire from reaching treetops.

Thousands of acres in Kittitas County — parcels of both private and public land — have gone through this same process.

Homeowners have been “very receptive” to getting their lots firewised, Foster said. The average size of the parcels ranges from ⅓ acre to 1 acre. Around 300 lots are in the queue for treatment. The crew has completed the work on 32 lots and assessed 250 more, but not all are expected to be finished by peak wildfire season this year. Some are scheduled out to next year.

The fuel reduction work is part of a larger effort to prevent a catastrophe in one of Washington’s communities at greatest risk of wildfire. It involves the Department of Natural Resources, the Kittitas County Conservation District, local fire departments, and homeowner associations, which work under the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition.

Roslyn is especially at risk because of its location on the east side of the Cascades. Warm air from the valley and cold air from the mountains create intense winds that can cause fast-moving fires. This scenario has “the potential to be very destructive,” said Tony Craven, wildfire preparedness project manager for the Kittitas County Conservation District.

In 2017, the Jolly Mountain fire ravaged 36,000 acres in the Cle Elum area. Unbelievably, the fire didn’t destroy any buildings, but its near-miss changed the county’s approach to wildfire mitigation.

“Jolly Mountain showed the need to work across boundaries,” Craven said. “Private landowners, state landowners, federal landowners, conservation districts and all the fire districts (are combining) all of our resources to protect the citizens of the upper Kittitas County.”

In the fire’s wake, the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition was formed, the Upper Kittitas County Fuels Crew established itself, and the Kittitas County Conservation District received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Forest Service to do fuels mitigation work. The U.S. Forest Service is also doing the same kind of work in an adjacent landscape.

The work will “reduce the fire intensity as it comes towards communities,” Craven said. “We’re really getting value for our dollars in building a large fuel break.”

According to the Department of Natural Resources, 2 million to 2.9 million acres in Washington need wildfire resiliency treatment. As of October 2025, the agency has completed treatment on nearly 600,000 acres.

The forests surrounding Roslyn are a high priority. Forests there are denser due to years of fire suppression.

“After some large fires in the early 20th century, fire was deemed too dangerous and had to be extinguished,” Craven said.

Lower-intensity fires naturally thin out forests and rejuvenate shrub layers.

From 2017 to 2025, the Department of Natural Resources has thinned trees in over 9,000 acres of forestland and spread surface wood chips across nearly 4,000 acres in the Cle Elum area. The agency’s goal is to treat an additional 39,000 to 62,000 acres there.

With its $10 million grant, the Kittitas County Conservation District wants to complete the wildfire resiliency work on 4,500 acres. So far, it’s treated 1,100 acres.

Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/29/washington-prevent-catastrophic-blaze-fire-prone-area/