PORT ANGELES — One of the wettest counties in the state is also its most likely to suffer catastrophic loss of property in the event of a major wildfire, a recent study shows.

Clallam County topped the state and ranked No. 5 out of 413 counties in 11 western states in a study from Montana-based Headwaters Economics that looked at the potential for damage in a fire.

It did not study the likelihood of fires getting started.

Jefferson County ranked No. 58 in the 11 western states in the same study, part of which was incorporated in a report called “Wildfire Hazard Assessment and the Wildland Urban Interface of the North Olympic Peninsula.”

“Their study provided the basic information,” said Dwight Barry, Peninsula College professor and co-author of the local assessment.

“We went one step further to figure out where the areas in Clallam County had the highest ratings.”

The assessment, released in May by the Peninsula College Center for Excellence and Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, is available online at www.pc.ctc.edu/coe.

Barry and a team of students worked with local fire districts, the state Department of Natural Resources, Olympic National Park and Olympic Natural Forest to evaluate hazards on the North Olympic Peninsula.

Early on, the team discovered that both Clallam and Jefferson counties had a “considerable existing risk for property loss in a major wildfire,” Barry said in a briefing before the Board of Clallam County Commissioners last month.

A combination of a heavy fuel load, the dryness caused by the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and the fact that there are “a whole lot of people who like living in the woods” placed Clallam County on the top list for potential wildfire hazard in the state, Barry said.

“All it would take is an ignition under the right weather conditions,” the study said.

Risk versus hazard

Barry addressed a common misconception between fire risk and fire hazard. He drew an analogy of a bear attack: risk is how likely you are to be attacked, and hazard is “what the bear does to you after the bear gets a hold of you.”

“Our hazard (in Clallam County) is really high,” Barry said.

“Should we have a major wildfire, the results could be really bad. We’re providing the scientific basis of getting the word out to the public.”

Beyond the benefits of public awareness, the research is being used to develop a community wildfire protection plan.

“A community wildfire protection plan is important because the fire service agencies in our county cannot apply for national fire grant funding unless we have a CWPP in place,” Barry told commissioners Mike Doherty and Mike Chapman last month.

“It’s important to do that development because the fire service agencies in the county don’t have the time or resources to do this on their own.”

After Barry’s presentation, Doherty said Chapman passed a resolution authorizing expenditure of grant funds to Peninsula College to research and develop the community wildfire protection plan.

September public meetings

Barry will lead a series of public meetings on fire hazards in September. He anticipates the passage of a community wildfire protection plan by the end of the year.

“Most people know, because of climate change and just the normal weather, the foothills here get fairly dry,” Doherty said.

Doherty said this summer’s forecast calls for an active fire season.

“We’ll expect to be students of wildfires because about half of British Columbia forests are affected by the pine needle,” Doherty said.

“We’ll be seeing plumes from their forest fires coming into the region.”

A 44-page, glossy photo atlas of the Wildfire Hazard Assessment and the Wildland Urban Interface of the North Olympic Peninsula research includes the following information:

• The North Olympic Peninsula gets dozens of small wildfires every summer and larger fires every few decades.

• More than 13,000 homes are located within Clallam County’s wildland-urban interface, or property in and around natural areas.

• Sparks from a logging train ignited the 38,000-acre Great Forks Fire of 1951. Forks residents were evacuated and 28 homes were destroyed. There was no loss of life.

Barry said there are a lot of $1 million homes in the foothills that fire trucks can’t access because of steep driveways or gates.

Researchers and firefighters call these areas the “wildland urban interface,” where human development overlaps wildfire-prone ecosystems.

The assessment shows maps of Clallam and Jefferson counties that detail fire hazards according to fuel, slope, aspect, climate and response-based hazards like access roads.

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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.