Perspectives on what life is like in some of Nevada’s high fire hazard areas. Featuring interviews with Jon Griggs, ranch manager at Maggie Creek Ranch in Elko, Nevada; and Jole Rector and Todd Ballowe, Washoe County residents living in a high fire hazard area.
Perspectives on what life is like in some of Nevada’s high fire hazard areas. Featuring interviews with Jon Griggs, ranch manager at Maggie Creek Ranch in Elko, Nevada; and Jole Rector and Todd Ballowe, Washoe County residents living in a high fire hazard area.
Welcome to the living with fire Podcast, where we share stories and resources to help you live more safely with wildfire. Hi, I'm Megan Kay, your host and outreach coordinator for the living fire program. On this episode, I got the opportunity to talk with Jon Griggs about his experiences with wildfire as manager of Maggie Creek Ranch in Elko. And later on, I was able to talk to Julie Rector and Todd Ballow about what they do to deal with wildfire living in a high fire hazard area. Enjoy the interview, I'm Megan Kay, the outreach coordinator for the living fire program. And I'm joined by Jon Griggs from Maggie Creek Ranch. Welcome, john.
Jon Griggs:Hey, thank you. Great to be with you.
Jordan Buxton:So I did a little research but if you do you mind just kind of like giving us a little background on Maggie Creek Ranch.
Jon Griggs:Yeah, sure. So So Maggie Creek Ranch is is reasonably large cow calf and, and stocker beef operation and poco county sits kind of between Elko and Carlin Nevada. And it's about 200,000 acres of public and private land that we that we graze on, it's it's owned by a family, the families owned it since 1975. So what is it at 46 years maybe, and I'm the hiring manager here, and I've been hired. I've been the hiring manager for 23 years now of the 30 years that I've worked here.
Megan Kay:Wow. So you, you basically were leader from the beginning as well, quite quite a bit of a name. What are you guys? How familiar familiar are you guys with the wildfire risk in your area, I imagine you work pretty closely. Because you also graze on public land, and you work pretty closely with land managers and things like that.
Jon Griggs:So what you're seeing is multiple fires that range in size from hundreds of acres to 1000s of acres to to at least one fire, that's 100,000 plus acres there. So that's, that's what we've experienced in fire in the last 20 years, multiple fires that in some areas have burned multiple times. And you know, when you're looking at that, you're you're thinking probably 70% of that 200,000 acres has burned at one time or another.
Megan Kay:And that's just in the time that you've been there. Correct.
Jon Griggs:Yep, acquainted one of those fires in 2007 March fire, it was about a 9000 acre fire, but it burned over compounds of the ranch compounds of the headquarters. So in that fire, we lost a house that burned to the ground, we lost another house that burned significantly that we had to destroy, we lost an office building, other other outbuildings and another house that was damaged significantly. So a lot of experience with fire. Besides buildings that we've lost, we've lost cattle, which is also painful. We've we've put ourselves at risk in fighting fires and trying to trying to move cattle away from from fire and fighting fires ourselves. So yeah, we've got a lot of history here. So
Megan Kay:with your with your experience, what kind of like right now what is what kind of preparation do you guys do for the wildfire season? the dry season? What does that look like on the ranch?
Jon Griggs:Well, there's, there's a lot of thought to it. So there's there's thought about about keeping yourself safe, right? And you're in where you live in your houses and things like that. And then there's thoughts about keeping your cattle safe. And then there's thoughts about protecting your factory and that the rangelands that our cattle around is our factory. And when, when that burns, it's yours before it's back in production, if ever so it scales up in what our thoughts are so and keep in ourselves, our families in our in our place, we live safe. The thing that we learned in that 2007 fire was that in a wind driven event, it's really pretty tough to keep wood structure safe. I mean, you think that you have a you have a green area that's defensible. You think that rose will help you defend it, you think that a lack of trees and you know, just just sagebrush is more defensible than then places that we traditionally think burn like, you know, you might think of a house or a cabin that's in the middle of a forest somewhere is is really fire prone and arcane. You know, that wasn't our case. We had very minimal big trees. You know, we had areas We thought were really defensible that turned out in a wind driven event or not.
Megan Kay:Yeah because of the structural ignitability of wood house so have you have you guys done any work to kind of you know retrofit and shore up those structures maybe putting a metal roof you know things like that
Jon Griggs:every chance every chance we get to re roof a building that will be a steel roof because that's for us that's number one. That's you know, asphalt shingles are certainly are certainly more fire resistant than than a cedar shake roof, but nothing is as good as steel and so that's, that's number one. Not the number two thought is is is where a house sits in relation to rangelands. raisins are obviously more at risk than a irrigated meadow, or, you know, a road area or things like that. So buildings that are closer to rangelands get a weather eye towards being fire resistant, more so than buildings that sit in the middle of a irrigated meadow. And can we we do kind of try to retrofit or at least expand fireproof areas or fire resistant areas around those places. More so than like that wet Meadow area.
Megan Kay:Before you mentioned factory. Do you mind explaining that to me? Like what are you talking about? Like the just the the grass that the cows feed on and everything?
Jon Griggs:Yes, exactly. So are are in the business sense of a cattle ranch. The cows that we run are the tool that make our product cows make calves that we sell. The factory space is our rangelands, that produces grass and forage that our cows need to exist. You know, we may not lose cows to a fire. But if we lose, if we lose the grass that they consume, and we lose the ability to produce that grass in subsequent years after the fire, then we really struggled to stay in business. And that's that's a common thread across branches in Nevada.
Megan Kay:So what kind of projects do you do in the range land to try to protect that factory.
Jon Griggs:So we think of fire in three phases before, during and after, before the fire right now, the biggest single contributing factor to large uncontrolled fires in our area and maybe everywhere in the West is the invasive annual cheatgrass, cheatgrass. When it cures ignites like gasoline, it makes the actual roof like gasoline does and it makes it makes fires uncontrollable in my in my experience, so so we're thinking about cheatgrass right now, we're just getting to, we're just getting kind of a green hue to rangelands in my area, South slopes are starting to green up and a lot of that green up is cheap grass. And we're thinking about concentrating our cows on that, because when the grass is green, it's a desired forage for our cows. And it's frankly, fairly decent forage, and quality is high in protein, and it comes earlier than than the desired native plants that that we like out there. So if we can camp sort of Camp our cows on cheap grass, make them eat that so that, that cheap grass doesn't reproduce. In theory, we have less of it. And in practice, you know, by by reducing this year's crop that's less to burn. So we do that kind of in two ways. We do that sort of passively in that, right now our cows are calving in areas that are cheatgrass prone, and we do it actively. And then we identify, like, like we have a targeted grazing area right now that that's a steady, it's a steady area, but it's but it's working in practice, targeted grazing area that we will put cows in a fence strip, and we will hold them water with the thought that you know, it's kind of the nuclear option. And we're not really worried about about a native component in that area. What we're trying to do is make defensible space. We're trying to make a fire break that fire managers can use to control fire. So So those are two things that we're doing before fire to try to mitigate risk of fire this coming season.
Megan Kay:Do you guys do any besides targeted grazing, which I mean makes total sense because you have all these cows? Do you do any other control methods like prescribed burning, or? I mean, I'd imagine mastication is not a huge option but things like that.
Jon Griggs:We have done some control burning but we feel like in our area in the in the CI grass era controlled burning is kind of off the table and it's really tough to keep cheatgrass out of a burned area even even receiving post fire because not a guaranteed success that that will keep t grass out of the equation. So for us, for the most part controlled burn is off the table. We haven't done mowings ourselves but our agency part Your Bureau of Land Management has done some in our area that helps. But we, we prefer to use cattle to do that as opposed to mechanized equipment. And then really that's before fire. That's kind of it for us.
Megan Kay:I mean, it's it's a, you're right, you bring up a good point, it's a constant battle, like you try to burn to get rid of the fuel, but then you basically are creating a vacuum for native or for invasive species to come in and kind of take in takeover. And especially with such a large area to manage doesn't seem
Jon Griggs:like that would work. Well. The other thing too is, is last time we did a control burn it was to try to mitigate big stands of decadent sagebrush that were really kind of crowding out everything else and and were a massive fuel load that we thought we could burn in January, we had an open January one year that was fairly dry, and we thought it would be good time to try to build some mosaics into that big standard decadence sage, we're talking about maybe 300 acres. That fire about got away from us in January and was a tense time and so that kind of put the lid on it for us to think about it. Control burn.
Megan Kay:evacuations are stressful. Often communities aren't given much notice before it's time to leave their homes. Prepare for evacuation now. Create an evacuation plan and pack a go bag with at least three days of essentials for every member of your family, including pets, go to living with fire calm slash prepared for more information. Do you mind if we transition to kind of what looks like during a fire? How do you go about keeping everyone safe and even possibly evacuating during a fire?
Jon Griggs:We in Elko County, we have a very robust volunteer firefighter system. We're a part of that we have an elk county brush truck on the ranch that we use on us and our neighbors. And then we have equipment of our own. A water truck and a dozer that we use. With our agency partners, we really focused on initial attack keeping spire small and catching them before they before they get big that that's probably the first thing 97 out of 100 times probably in in our area that is successful, we keep fires to the initial attack phase 10s of acres as opposed to a hundreds of acres. And that's really the goal, three out of 100 times we we do not succeed, fires go big and go hundreds to 1000s of acres. What we need to think about there first, we focus on initial attack. And that really involves people on the ranch that are trained and fight fire. And we don't really involve other folks on the ranch that are not. So then when we transition to big fires, then we start thinking about about the community at large, not just not just fire folks on the ranch. So So the thing that your listeners could take for me. And what I would want everybody to think about is that when fires go big in your community, is the time to start thinking about what your personal response is going to be what your personal setup looks like what your house looks like, what you care about that is at risk, you know, livestock, pets, family, houses, buildings, those kinds of things. And I say this in a way to say that when there's a smoke column in your area, that's the time to think about what your response is going to be. Because by the time that you recognize that fire is a threat to you, it's too late to think about that.
Megan Kay:And that's kind of why we exist as we're trying to give people resources, knowledge and empower them to live more safely.
Jon Griggs:That's what I really appreciate about your efforts.
Megan Kay:When you have all of this all of these personnel and you know, cattle to to look after, what kind of resources besides your personal resources? Do you call upon Dr. There? If for some reason you would have to get like, you'd have to move cattle really fast? Is there like a network of people with trailers? Or do you have to build that, for us, we
Jon Griggs:almost have to triage our livestock in arrangement environment, we know that fire moves so fast that it's not safe for us to be a horseback in front of a fire. We don't do that, that kind of ties into that notion of there's fire in your area, you need to make plans before you're at risk.
Megan Kay:So you shouldn't even be in a position where you're saying you have to make that split second decision, right.
Jon Griggs:So that upfront plan would be making sure cows can't get trapped, you know, gates open where they need to be open and cows in my experience anyway to do a fair job of getting out of the way when they can so you got to be able to make sure that they can I hate that triage thought but horses are more valuable to us than cattle. So we definitely want to get those out of the way and you know things things like that you're thinking about things like that. And you may you may call upon Neighbors get to bring vehicles to help you with that,
Megan Kay:but emphasize preparing early, so you don't ever have to be in that position. So now I have a good idea of what happens during a fire. It can be scary. Absolutely. Yep. Having been through some major fires, especially the one you talked about in 2007. I think you already touched upon it, but to two parts one part, do you what have you learned from those events? And do you have any mitigation plans this year, like, Are there any big projects that you're working on that you kind of chip away year after year to make the ranch safer. And then also, if you have any tips for for other ranchers or just get people in people in the community at large,
Jon Griggs:the biggest thing I learned that I want listeners know about the drum that you're beating, I lived in that you can think that you're prepared. But you need to think bigger than what you're thinking. We thought we were prepared for the fire we experienced in 2007. We were very experienced with fire prior to that. And we were taught a very painful lesson. I pray and hope that nobody ever lives that lesson again. And so the preparations you're making, you know, when you look at your property, and you look at your livestock, and you look at where you live, think bigger. Another thing to think about is make relationships now, so whether you're you're a homeowner in a somewhat have at risk area, or you're a rancher on rangelands, or, or any combination of those things, make relationships now, you know, you don't have to be a volunteer firefighter, but you can know who those folks are. And you can know your your fire managers in your area. And you can have those relationships so that when things are really bad, you can know who to talk to, and you can know how to get information, and you can know how to make plans, you can have answers when you need them. And that's that's a really big thing. You know, I don't I don't really have ongoing on the ground, year to year projects, other than what we're trying to do for fuels mitigation. But one thing I do year to year is maintain relationships with with fire agency folks and land management agency folks that deal with before, during and after fire and you can be a resource to them, as opposed to put it bluntly, somebody that they will have to deal with that doesn't know that which which takes away from their effort. That's a pretty big deal to me. Well said,
Jordan Buxton:Where would wildfire rank on the risk for, you know, a cattle ranch? Because I imagine there are a plethora of threats that you have to deal with, you know, on a daily and weekly basis. But wildfire, it sounds like it, it has the potential to destroy large, large portions of your your grazing land, which is a huge threat to your profitability. So where would you say it ranks?
Jon Griggs:Think about it and that sort of metaphor I'm using with factory So, so so think about it as a as a big box store? is is is the shoplifter your biggest number one threat, you know, cattle rustling is alive and well we we still brand our cattle to identify them to to mitigate that to some extent, but burning our factory burning that big box store is our number one threat, you know, unlike the big box store it it can to some extent rebuild itself. But that that could take years panic, you know, if native range lands comes back as a cheatgrass monoculture, then we've lost a lot. And, and not only we lost a lot, we're at risk for losing a lot year after year. Right. Now, the other thing about the other thing about fire to me is that as a ranch manager as a rancher is it's, it's a big, big thing to me and that it's really been hard to be proactive. For me feels like you know, when I show you that 70 80% of this ranch has burned in the last 20 years, I've had a hard time clearly of being proactive to that it feels like I'm always reacted to that. Or you know, it seems like whenever we get ahead or you know, or trying to try to do things to get ahead and then we torch off another 20,000 acres and and I have to react to that and I have to find a place for those cows or or you know find a way to keep myself and my my co workers employed without the factory to support our calories. So yeah, long answer to say number one
Megan Kay:84% of wildfires nationwide are caused by people. If you're planning on heading out and enjoying public lands, visit Nevada fire info.org and learn how you can recreate responsibly and do your part to prevent wildfires.
Todd Ballowe:I'm Todd Ballowe
Jole Rector:and I'm Jole Rector.
Megan Kay:The reason that I wanted to reach you guys I wanted to talk to you for this podcast is, you know, I follow you on Instagram, Joey, and you posted this past summer, summer 20. about all the wildfires that had come close to your house, for example, the post that really resonated with me is in October, you made a post and you said that there have been eight wildfires within five miles of your home. And that just sounds very stressful
Todd Ballowe:is either five or six out of those eight, we could actually see open flames.
Megan Kay:And now some of those photos that you shared were intense. Just that's that's the feeling that I got from them. So I was wondering, could you guys just describe what kind of effect that had on your, your daily life? And yeah, just in your own words, kind of tell us what it was like.
Todd Ballowe:It was it was a it was an interesting summer because as more and more fires kept popping up nearby us, I would get into this habit of just when I would go outside of just checking the horizon and the nearby areas to see if there is any smoke in the air or open flames that we could see. Or one of the later ones. I was working at my desk and my computer powered off. I went, Oh, that kind of felt like a transformer blew. So I walked outside. And sure enough, one right across the highway from us have blown and there was a fire going. And you just besides being ready to go, we things packed so we could get out if we needed to again quickly. There was a lot of Oh, not again. Kind of frustration that would build up the just, it was hard to believe that and there was there was already one this year. It wasn't a brushfire. It was um, I think was an abandoned car. And that's Cory that's not too far from us. But in January, we saw smoke going up in there and we're going already it's already just barely starting 2021 and two Here we go again, although we have never been in any danger from that. It's just the mental state you get to be in have been prepared and also finding it kind of tedious in a way.
Megan Kay:So it sounds like you guys always have your backpack now. Always have that that go kit and that emergency bag
Jole Rector:in the summertime. Yeah, in the winter time we unpack and live in the house. But yeah, it's summertime at the peak of fire season we have we have suitcases, basically living in the bedroom. Or at least we did last summer.
Megan Kay:How does that compare to? I mean, because you said you've been there since 2012. Usually like how did last year compared to other seasons that you've lived through up there?
Jole Rector:Well, fire seasons are generally pretty frightening out here. When I was here before Todd moved in. There was one fire that was started by a homeless person living at the bottom of our neighborhood down in a ravine and he started a fire trying to goodness knows what cook dinner or something along those lines. And but that didn't get out of hand and honestly the fire that came through the big fire that has put our home in a sea of burns Gar
Megan Kay:what fire was that was at the povo fire or
Jole Rector:that was the Anderson acres fire. It was July 23 2020 and you know we had already I think this was like our fifth fourth fire of the season. Something like that because our neighbors started a fire in their yard just you know cutting down the grass to try and maintain for fire season and fire started fortunately they got he got that out really quick but Todd was on it he was ready to run over and go help put it out as necessary. So that was our first fire of the season lat and then we had the Provo bill fire frequency which fortunately we're on the leeway side so that you know the wind was pushing it away from us although even as the wind pushes a fire away it's still slowly expands that border. On the windward side, we were inside, whatever.
Megan Kay:So what was it during those fires Did you guys have to evacuate at all.
Jole Rector:We definitely evacuated for the Anderson acre Fire because I was looking, I was doing something over the sink in the kitchen and looking out the window above the kitchen sink and soft flames rising up at the bottom of the neighborhood. And we've got a little hill across on the other side of the freeway from us. And and the flame started in was going two thirds of the way up that up that hill from our view. And it was like, Oh my gosh, what do we do? And finally, I just failed out in the house. I'm like, get the dogs get the kid and we need to get out of here. We had no bags. No. We didn't even have pull ups for the kid. Or shoes. We just got like, okay, phone, computer necessary things that, again, we need for work and just getting around in the world that present day world and get out. So we had to evacuate in six minutes. We didn't even really know what were we were going to do. We called our friends that live over in sparks. And they're in a high fire area to you know, out there. But Los Altos area, and those little hills over there. And but we went over there and and then pod went back first to see if the evacuation order had been lifted. But, you know, we drove away from the house thinking we're homeless.
Todd Ballowe:There was a wall of flame heading towards our house that we had already hit the road on the way out. And I from what our neighbors way out of the neighborhood sorry, time It made us made it through our fence and about 1212 minutes from where it started.
Megan Kay:Where did it start? Like in relation to you was very close to you know, it was about a quarter of a mile away? Yeah, it's even like an eighth of a mile. It was so you didn't really it's not like something you could see the flames coming over the hills. It was right, right. Right in your backyard. And then it sounds like because you guys are so prepared. Now it sounds like maybe was that the incident that made you think that you know, we need to have our bags packed.
Jole Rector:Yeah. And then Todd has done a lot of I we both kind of go team work at it. I really work on the gardens around the house. And Todd has put in gravel paths. And we've both been diligent over the years to cut down sagebrush on the property because this house was a foreclosure. And I feel like a lot of people in our age bracket are buying foreclosures, because that's what we can afford. And we're slowly fixing them up as as we get the means to do so. And so that's exactly what this house is. And this property is, you might even remember, I don't know if you were up there that season in 2012. When I when I got
Megan Kay:it, I remember when you were when you bought it. I never went out to the house, though. But the But yeah, I was we were working together at that time.
Jole Rector:The the whole property looked exactly like your background there just sagebrush all around the house. You know, if if there would have been a fire to the extent of the Anderson acres fire back in 2012, or two, you know, through 2000, probably all the way through 2015, then this house would have gone up just in flames and been done. Yeah. So in, in general, what would you say is the overall kind of vibe of the community in terms of like, Are your neighbors? Are they active and trying to remove? You know, the sagebrush around their homes and install more rock and, and, and gravel? Is there kind of community wide efforts? Or do you feel like everyone's kind of doing their own thing and not really kind of working out the neighborhood together on it?
Todd Ballowe:I don't know that we necessarily work together as neighborhood, Mommy, mainly because there's only what the 12 or 14 homes in the neighborhood, okay. And they're all on larger parcels, like an acre or more. And a lot of them are on two or three. So but everybody does maintain that we don't talk about it. So we don't have like a game plan as a community. But everyone, for the most part maintains their own property and keeps it clear and keeps the grass mowed we're where that's where you can do that safely and keeps the sagebrush pulled out as best as possible, our neighbor across the street after that fire to Anderson acres because had it jumped the road that we're on a long view, there was quite a bit of sagebrush or bitterbrush right along the road that could have caught fire and then that home could have gone down, potentially, but they've since cut that all down.
Megan Kay:When you moved in Joey, were you aware? I mean, You know, wildfires are scary, we have them in this area, but were you like totally aware of the risk of the wildfire risk up there,
Jole Rector:I knew high fire zone. So you know, I'd heard these phrases put out there. And you know, when I first got in here, because we are literally our next door neighbor is volunteer fire department. And at that time, they were having regular Wednesday meetings where they would go over and the volunteers would sit down and have a meeting. And at some point, I think I was communicating with them because you know how I am I like to go up and say hi to everybody and meet all the people and interact and socialize and flap my lips, because I'm a talker. And and they were like, you need to you need to put defensible space around that house. And so I was working nights as a blackjack dealer at GSR and, and so my system was I would work on the weekends and then I would get up and go out and fill my my dumpster with as much sagebrush as I could pack in there. And so that would be my Wednesday routine, I would get up, go cut down sagebrush fill up the trash can and take it up, because they picked up our trash late at that point. And, and then I had someone come over and help me just do a big cut down of sagebrush. And so the defensible space has been slow. And one thing that I would that I would think for listeners is to, you know, be aware and make the changes necessary. But try not to overwhelm yourself, you know, if you cut down one sage brush, or one rabbit brush, and that's that much more space that you've just opened up to not literally be a torch going.
Megan Kay:Yeah, I think a lot of people get overwhelmed, because we give all these defensible space recommendations, and they're like, I can't do all of this. And then maybe they just don't start. And yeah, just you're absolutely right, just removing one bush at a time will reduce the risk. For sure.
Jole Rector:Yeah, and then going from there, because once you start putting, I don't know, I've been thinking about entropy a lot, you know, because we're all living in our households. And so there's a certain amount of energy that's cycling through the household. And you can always, you know, if you put energy in one direction with within the system, the closed system, then it's going to be conducive to continue that within the system. And so you know, if you cut down one sagebrush, then it's going to open up space for you to see what else what you know, what needs to be done from there. And then you, you take the next step, and then your next step will be presented to you. And so, you know, it is a slow process, but it does gain momentum, as you as you work with it.
Megan Kay:What have you. What have you guys learned with like creating your defensible space and working on your house? And what what do you what are you planning on doing this year to kind of prepare for wildfire? Well,
Todd Ballowe:definitely one of the things we learned is that the gravel works great and that if it had been windier, our outcome might not have been the same. So we're there's actually some of the gravel paths that are a little bit further away from the house. There are about four feet wide. And we're probably going to expand those by a couple of feet to try and keep it from even getting that close to the house and also clearing out around the fence because a lot of the our fence was held up with wooden posts and those are all gone and so it's because they're burned now they were they got destroyed. And then of course there's there's a metal post hoping it holding it up as well. So it's still standing but the wooden posts are all gone. And it's good to keep that area clean too. And it's so it's not just your house, it's it's avenues towards your house. There's the frontage along our road. That's a an easement. It's not technically our property but I make sure I keep that all cleaned down with the grass because we have a pretty large Wild Rose patch that it's nearly impossible to clean out the dead wild girls out there because the thorns and if that guy that got hit by a fire it would be pretty crazy the the damage it could potentially do that's far from our house and we have a lot of defensible space between us and them.
Megan Kay:So you guys are I mean I feel like he has already shared some great tips for listeners. But is there anything else that you want to share anything that comes to mind?
Jole Rector:You know when it comes down to it, your house and your material belongings are not important. your health, your safety. That's what's important. So pack up, get your animals, get your kids make sure that everybody's safe and just let the firefighters do their work. Because if you stay behind in an evacuation and they have to come in and use the area around you to manage a fire, if people are still in their homes and refusing to evacuate, which we do have a lot of neighbors in the neighborhood that are guilty of that, then it doesn't allow the firefighters to do the work that they need to do because now they're focusing on your safety rather than working with the fire. And so I think that's really important is just just go somewhere safe. If you're in a really sketchy situation, just pack up, get out of there, go somewhere safe and do whatever it is that it can help you calm down.
Megan Kay:Thank you for listening to the living with fire podcast You can find more stories about wildfire and other resources at living with fire calm. The Living fire program is funded by the University of Nevada, Reno extension, Nevada Division of Forestry Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service.