Guidelines for Protecting Historic Resources from Wildland Fire

Abstract

In a world increasingly altered by a changing climate, each year the threats from wildfire to communities, to cultural resources, and to the American landscape are devastatingly real and growing. Preserve Montana (PMT) proposes to create a set of guidelines to help guide disaster responses to wildland fire, for a target audience of individuals and organizations responsible for preserving historic structures and artifacts. While some cultural resource officers at the federal or state levels may have developed a plan that closes the communication gap between preservation and wildland fire personnel, this represents only a small fraction of the individuals and organizations that have responsibility for protecting historic structures and artifacts.

Unfortunately, many of these individuals and organizations lack the experience or resources to develop a plan for protecting resources under their purview. The guidelines will build on existing knowledge of wildland fire behavior, defensible space, and established inventories of historic structures and artifacts to generate a process and procedures to establish a line of communication between cultural resource stewards and incident management teams responsible for allocating firefighting resources on the ground during a wildland fire. As the threat to communities by wildland fire across the nation grows each year, the guidelines will seek to close the communications gap between those that know the significance of cultural resources under their charge, and those that are charged with protecting the wide range of assets and values at risk during a wildland fire.