VERMONT—The Chittenden Emergency Management Team invited Smokey Bear to the annual “Chittenden Day” celebration to bolster their wildfire prevention. Green Mountain National Forest fire staff say the area is not well-known for wildfires. They’d like to keep it that way with the help of proactive communities like the town of Chittenden, which included wildfire in their most recent Local Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Wildfires aren’t exactly frequent in the Green Mountain state, nor do they look like what might be seen out West. In Vermont, wildfire is unlikely to be the first hazard that comes to mind when planning for emergencies. But make no mistake, the state has seen drought for the past three years and wildland firefighters have been responding to more fires than usual.

“The past few drought years we’ve had some interagency response to wildland fires requiring multiple days of suppression activity,” said Lindsay Rae Silvia, fire and fuels technician. “They’ve all been human-caused; they’ve all been preventable.”

With climate change exacerbating the fire season everywhere, it’s hard to know what to expect next year or in the foreseeable future. That is why Silvia was happy to learn that her fire crew wasn’t the only one noticing the wildfire changes over the past few years. The Chittenden Emergency Management Team recognized a need to address wildfire hazards while putting together an application for FEMA funding to address the town’s emergency response needs. The team reached out to the forest in 2020 for input on the town’s local hazard mitigation plan, something Silvia encourages.

“We haven’t had a lot of towns reach out to us for input on wildfire risk or prevention,” said Silvia. “But they can! We’d really like to see more towns consider wildfire in their local hazard mitigation plans and we are happy to help however we can.”

Many towns might not recognize wildfire as a risk when putting together their plans. It is easy to become complacent toward wildfire in a state like Vermont, where the climate and vegetation make large-scale fires unlikely.

By simply recognizing recent wildfires in the area and acknowledging the possibility of future wildfires, Chittenden is taking an important step toward wildfire prevention that will hopefully contribute to less human-caused fires in the area.

The town of Chittenden has already begun implementing its new mitigation measures. Just this summer, it unveiled a new fire danger rating sign. Town officials also organized an educational campaign to increase awareness of fire danger, which included getting Smokey Bear out in front of new faces.