Today's headlines:
- Evacuation drills may have helped reduce the human damage caused by Spokane’s wildfires.
- A restoration expert helps you with the check off list of things to do to get your house back to pre-fire safety levels.
- Idaho and the federal government have added recreation to the list of things on their Good Neighbor cooperative agreements.
Some Northwest Forest Service employees worry a proposed restructuring of their agency will eliminate important research projects.
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Emergency officials in Spokane say evacuation drills may have helped during the devastating wildfires that tore through the city. One person died from medical complications while evacuating from a nursing home. But no other fatalities were reported.
Sarah Nuss (NUH-ss) is the director of emergency management for Spokane. She says two neighborhoods in the city did an evacuation drill. One was in April, and one was last year.
20260831_evac drills_CC :15 "...how to use it."
SARAH NUSS: “The goal was to test our alert and notification system for the region, meaning the way that we send out alerts to catalyze people to take action for immediate life safety threats. To test that system to see, you know, people got it, understand what the barriers might be to people using that or knowing how to use it. ”
Nuss says neither of the neighborhoods that did the drills were affected by the fires. But she says the feedback helped emergency officials improve communication.
The rebuilding after Spokane’s wildfires is slowly beginning.
The city of Spokane says it has accelerated its permitting process. City officials say they issued their first permit for rebuilding a single-family home last Thursday, just two days after the application was filed.
Many wildfire survivors have gotten that far, but have begun the process of cleaning the residue left by smoke and flames.
Some of that involves simply wiping down surfaces. But John Holder from First Onsite Property Management in Spokane says some of it involves climbing and crawling into spaces where smoke may have seeped.
20260831_burned properties1_CC :17 “…aren’t addressed.”
John Holder: “Some of the hidden things that we look at is like the attics, how much ash and soot caught up in the attics. Their ducts usually need to be cleaned, filters changed, those type of things also. Anywhere where that smoke and ash can kind of hide and continue to cause an issue down the road for you if those aren't addressed.”
Holder says fabrics like linens and curtains should be washed. He suggests shampooing carpets too.
20260831_burned properties2_CC :11 “…the structure.”
John Holder: “You can vacuum your carpets and whatnot, which definitely is gonna be helpful, but a good carpet cleaning is usually needed too, especially if you had any kind of considerable ash within the structure.”
The city says the rebuilding process can’t move ahead until you can assure them that you’ve had all asbestos removed. That may involve hiring experts to come in and do testing and, if necessary, having all asbestos safely removed.
The Coeur d’Alene city council tonight will take up an issue related to a controversial proposed development project between Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls. They’ll discuss a subdivision that’s part of that larger Coeur Terre [kor-TERR] project.
Coeur d’Alene’s planning and zoning commission approved a preliminary plan for the subdivision on July 14. Madelyn Knutson, a resident of the Indian Meadows neighborhood, appealed the decision earlier this month. Her appeal cites safety and administrative overreach, among other concerns.
If the council sides with Knutson at tonight’s appeal hearing, the company developing Coeur Terre could be eligible for compensation by the city, according to the Coeur d’Alene Press. If the council denies the appeal, the development team can continue planning the project.
The hearing will start tonight at 5 in the Coeur d’Alene library community room.
For years, Idaho has had Good Neighbor Agreements with the federal government to manage federal lands in the Gem State.
Those normally apply to areas where the feds want to get work done, but don’t have the money or manpower, so the state steps in to help. They’ve mostly been timber harvest and habitat restoration projects.
Now, the two governments are extending the Good Neighbor arrangement to recreation. Some of the new projects are in north and central Idaho.
The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation and two national forests have agreed to work together to maintain the Centennial Trail. Not the 23-mile segment that runs east from Washington through Kootenai County, but the thousand-mile-long version that runs north-south from the Canadian border to the Nevada state line.
Hailey Husband: “That trail was established in 1990, but it didn't come along with any funding. So it needs some maintenance, I'll say.”
Hailey Husband from the parks department says the targeted trail segments are in the Nez Perce Clearwater National Forest.
Hailey Husband: “Some of the sections are nearly impassable, especially after this past winter. We had really bad blowdowns after the wet and windy conditions we had.”
Husband says the government agencies are partnering with private groups to do the work. She says one clean up project is complete. Several more will be done this fall. The federal government has allocated 150-thousand dollars for them.
She says the agreement will also provide money to buy signs for snowmobile trails in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest.
Husband says a second project targets both non-motorized and motorized trails in the Salmon-Challis National Forest in central Idaho.
The U.S. Forest Service announced a major restructuring of the agency in March. At least three research and development facilities in the Northwest are being considered for closure. As Juliet Grable reports, scientists are working to continue long term research as they wait for answers.
20260831_Forest Service_feature 5:05 SOQ
[Audio: Truck rattling down road]
Mark Schulze pulls over by a burned hillside in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Although most of the smaller trees on this steep slope are dead, the tops of several large conifers are still green.
Mark Schulze: These old Doug-firs, they have such thick bark that if it doesn't get up into the canopy, it's going to survive in most circumstances.”
Shulze is assistant professor and researcher at Oregon State University and director of the forest, which straddles 1600 acres in the Willamette National Forest east of Eugene, Oregon. Schulze lives onsite; in August of 2023, he saw dramatic changes when the Lookout Fire burned about 70 percent of the Andrews. Though traumatic, the fire presented an incredible opportunity to learn how the forest recovers from a major fire.
Mark Schulze: One of the valuable things is that we are essentially always collecting the pre-treatment data for any natural disturbance.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station coordinates research at Andrews and 10 other experimental forests and ranges across Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. For decades, scientists have been collecting data on streams, climate, nutrient cycling, and more at these living laboratories.
Now, some fear that threats to funding, cuts in staffing, and a reorganization of the Forest Service could threaten the continuity of long-term research at these specially designated places.
The Forest Service shed nearly 6,000 employees in 2025, due to Department of Government Efficiency layoffs and early retirement incentives.
Sherri Johnson, a former research ecologist with Pacific Northwest Research Station, spent 20 years as lead Forest Service scientist at Andrews. She’s worried about what could happen if there aren’t enough staff to maintain the many experiments. She delayed her own retirement so she could mentor a scientist to take over the hydrology and chemistry program. That person was never hired. Eventually, a colleague took on these duties.
Sherri Johnson: “It’s really concerning: how are we going to keep these long-term measurements going? Because once they're turned off, yeah, you can restart gauges, but there's no guarantee that the data will be comparable to what you had before.”
In March, the Forest Service announced a “sweeping restructuring” of the agency. It includes moving the headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, and potentially closing 57 of 77 research and development facilities. Three sites in the Pacific Northwest are being considered for closure, including the Pacific Northwest Research Station headquarters in Portland, and in Seattle, and Wenatchee, Washington.
In a July House Subcommittee hearing, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz assured members the goal is not to cut research or eliminate scientific positions, but to consolidate facilities to meet a dwindling budget.
The agency says it is not shutting down any experimental forests or ranges, although some researchers may have to move. Schultz said details about facility closures should be released within several weeks.
Johnson says researchers are on edge while they wait for more information.
Sherri Johnson: “It’s been really challenging for the people to know what their career track is, what's going to happen to their projects, what's going to happen to any of their lives.”
Chris French is the associate chief at the Forest Service. He says details on the agency’s reorganization should be released very soon.
“We've been working really hard to make sure that we can find outcomes that keep our people within their local commuting areas, but lessen the costs and burden on the agencies, so that we can be in a more sustainable place”
The agency defines commuting distance as 49 miles.
Uncertainty around funding is adding to the stress. The Trump Administration has proposed zeroing out the agency's research budget.
French says the need for Forest Service research is critically important.
“If Congress essentially were to no longer fund us for research and development. I think one, you you'd have to move that research somewhere, and whether that's through the university systems or it's it's through USGS or someone someplace like that.”
TRANSITION Audio: Birds, creek
Brooke Penaluna is a fisheries biologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and lead scientist at Andrews. She studies forested streams, which not only provide vital habitat for fish and salamanders, but drinking water for millions of people.
Brooke Penaluna: “Much of the drinking water that supports Salem, Eugene comes from forested watersheds that are supported by the Forest Service.”
As part of a larger project with the Pacific Northwest Research Station, Penaluna is monitoring streams that burned in the Labor Day fires in 2020 to learn how fires affect drinking water supplies.
Throughout the Pacific Northwest, research like this is only becoming more urgent as climate change accelerates. Schulze, the Andrews Forest director, says sustained commitments from the Willamette National Forest, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and OSU have helped maintain a thriving program of scientific inquiry here.
Schulze: “So if any one partner were to not be able to commit to the partnership then all the remaining partners would suffer and the whole operation would suffer.”
While managers deal with a challenging fire season across the Pacific Northwest, scientists continue collecting data, knowing it may take years to sort out what it all means.
SOC: In the Andrews Experimental Forest, I’m Juliet Grable
SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Adia White, Jenna Dennison, Audrey Nelson, Juliet Grable and Doug Nadvornick, today’s host and producer.
Thanks for tuning in to the podcast today. This is SPR News.
SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Lisa Leinberger, Audrey Nelson, Jordy Jones and Doug Nadvornick, today’s host and producer.
Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
Thanks for listening. This is SPR News.
