Powder River Examiner -

The Broadus Volunteer Fire Department held a meeting on Thursday, January 19th, presented by Cory Cheguis, Custer County Fire Chief. The meeting centered around the possible introduction of an online burn permit system, which Custer County and around seven of the Eastern Montana Counties in the DNRC Eastern Land Office have in place.

Cheguis presented the system to the assembled group of locals, which included county commissioners, local ranchers and taxpayers, and Broadus VFD members. The system, which is available online for anyone to look up, provides a method for individuals to conduct controlled burns to provide information about their planned burn. The location is then set on an online map of the county, providing volunteer firefighters and anyone who may see the smoke to look up the map and see whether the smoke is a wildfire or controlled burn. The site, currently available at https://app.egovmt. com/burnpermit/ also provides updates on whether or not the county is in a burn ban.

Members of the Broadus VFD spoke up in favor of instituting the system in Powder River County, as it would help them to cut down on false calls where members of the all-volunteer force had to stop what they were doing and spend fuel and time going out to check on what amounted to a rancher burning their dump.

During the meeting and over the ensuing days a plan was formulated to show how this system would be implemented in Powder River County. The current system would remain in place where locals looking to conduct burns are encouraged to call in to the Powder River County Sheriff's Dispatch.

According to Powder River County Fire Chief Raymond Ragsdale, this online system would be dovetailed in the dispatch level – when someone calls in, a dispatcher will take the info and plug it into the online system, meaning all parties are then able to look up the burn. The cost associated with the system ($3 per permitee per year), would be absorbed by the Broadus VFD if the system is implemented. If an individual would like to bypass the phone call and sign up for a permit themselves, they are free to do so, and it would still show up on the site for everyone to see.

Ragsdale told us the volunteer system of calling in would provide a balance of instituting the helpful online mapping system for their end, while maintaining the concerns of the community members expressed during the meeting, which tended to be vocally opposed to more government regulation and fees, and potential for increases in fees in the future.

Those voices seemed to come around to the idea of the online mapping system as the meeting progressed, when they learned of the helpful aspects of the system.

In Custer County, fees for a burn permit are $10 per person, with $3 going to pay for the system and the other $7 going to the Custer County Volunteer Fire Department for administrative fees. That charge would be a yearly amount, say for instance if a rancher wants to burn ditches in spring and a dump in late fall, the charge would only be the $10. With the Broadus VFD looking to pick up the costs of the permits, those costs would not be passed on to taxpayers, and Ragsdale said the total costs per year are likely to be in the several hundred dollar range for the department.

This system would apply for those looking to burn ditches, slash piles, dumps, and the like, not for burning garbage in burn barrels (though different rules would apply if the county is under burn bans).

Controlled burns that go out of control are still the responsibility of the person lighting the fire, and fines and other fees could be levied should a burn go bad. Randy Sanders of DNRC provided a good analogy on why calling in a burn is important, as he related the story of a planned burn which had not been called in to authorities during September of 2020 and quickly grew out of control, nearly burning down a town as the wind whipped the blaze into a 47,000 acre inferno, burning 24 structures. That fire was the Huff Fire, in Jordan.

Casey Slovek with the Broadus VFD described the addition of the new system: "Look at this as a form of communication. It's a thing to help us out, and it puts everyone on the same page."

Ragsdale says if things go according to plan, the mapping feature will be put into action within the next month. If and when the system goes into place, a link will be provided to the burn site from the Powder River County website.