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Ear to the Ground is Back!

WA DNR News - September 4, 2025 - 3:14pm

By Editorial Staff

Have you heard those rumblings around that state lately?

No, it’s not Rainier ready to blow her pristine top—it’s the Ear to the Ground blog rolling its way out of a years-long hibernation, bursting back onto the scene here at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

A few months ago, an intrepid team of word scientists in the Communications and Outreach Division unearthed the blog while looking for more ways to connect with the larger DNR community.

Dusting it off for examination, the team determined this blog was indeed an artifact within the agency that could be resurrected to dig deeper into the people and places that make up DNR. It could be a place to zoom in on the amazing programs and progress individuals across the agency are involved with. It could be a creative space for those who like to express their appreciation for work or nature through poetry or photography. It could be a place to learn.

The storytelling would be collaborative, the team decided, so that they could research and tell stories and invite others to share experiences in their own words and pictures.

In this blog, you’ll find stories that profile employees with decades of experience at the agency (and decades of stories to tell). You’ll find features diving in-depth into exciting work happening across the state. You’ll find art, photography, poetry, career memoirs and retrospectives, and so much more. You’ll be moved, surprised, and motivated.

And if you ever find yourself motivated to contribute to the blog, review the submission guidelines and reach out to the team at blog@dnr.wa.gov anytime!

With that, we invite you to read our first two stories:

“Fire, Within” by Billy Finn

“A Total Dumpster Fire (in a Good Way!)” by Celesta Collacchi

… And a bonus photo gallery!

Categories: Partner Feeds

Fire, Within

WA DNR News - September 4, 2025 - 3:10pm

Story by Billy Finn, DNR Communications

A look at Washington State’s Correctional Camps Program and the lives of incarcerated firefighters who serve in it.

The burn scars of the Nakia Creek Fire (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett)

NAKIA CREEK

HIS LIPS WERE DRY when he woke up. 

That’s how he knew it was going to be a bad day.

There’d been talk on the line the last few days about an eastern wind event heading in their direction. Now, apparently, it was here. 

Firefighters in southwest Washington hate eastern winds. They’re hot, dry, and brittle. They sweep across the parched plains of the Columbia Plateau and tumble down the Cascades like dragon breath, squeezing all the moisture from trees and grass and throats and lips.

Worst of all, eastern winds make wildfires pop, which is exactly what happened in the early morning hours of October 16, 2022.1

Paul Kalchik woke up in his cell at Larch Corrections Center that morning with chapped lips. He felt a dryness in the air as he twisted his tired body off his bunk and began to dress in the dark.

Red Nomex shirt. 

Gray-green pants. 

Thick black boots. 

Gloves. 

Helmet. 

Goggles. 

The same thing he’d been wearing for 22 days straight.

Kalchik had been fighting fires as a member of Washington’s Correctional Camps Program for about four years, slowly working his way up to lead sawyer on one of the four incarcerated hand crews at Larch.

He loved the work and wanted to pursue it as a career when he got out. He intended to prove himself, one fire at a time.

This particular fire—newly dubbed the Nakia Creek Fire—had ignited a week prior, on October 9, when a group of local kids shot off some fireworks that ignited a patch of brush along a steep ridge in Yacolt Burn State Forest, just north of the Columbia River. 2 

The fire had quickly grown to 350 acres before crews from Larch, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and local units from Clark and Cowlitz counties were able to dig enough line to contain it.3

That morning, Kalchik’s crew was responding to a simple two-acre spot fire that had sparked over the containment line; a few hungry embers looking to keep the party going.

But as soon as he got outside, Kalchik felt the wind kicking up.

As the sun began to rise slowly over the ridge line, Kalchik’s crew joined two other Larch crews hiking down into the forest. They spent all morning trying to pinch the fire before it reached a “leave island” towards the top of the hill—a stand of trees that loggers leave untouched during a clear-cut.

But the more Kalchik and his crew carved line and laid hose, the less things felt under control. 

The winds were too stubborn, the fire spreading too far, too fast. Smoke was blooming across the forest floor like hateful clouds. The flames were getting bigger, their burning tongues licking at the tops of the firefighters’ helmets.

That’s when Jayme Morgan, Kalchik’s crew boss, got a call on his radio from the crew’s lookout perched on the forest road above them.

“You guys need to get out of there,” the voice crackled from inside Morgan’s radio.

Morgan quickly directed his crew up the hill, charting an escape route across some “good black” of recently burned ground.

It wasn’t until they got up to the forest road and looked back down the hill that they realized how close they’d been to a disaster.

In just a few hours, the fire had grown from a lazy two-acre spot to 900 acres of angry conflagration. Kalchik and his crew hiked along the forest road and watched as planes soared over their heads, dropping fat plumes of red retardant onto the burning landscape. Spires of dark smoke belched over the tree line as flames at least six feet high tore their way up the hillside.

I was just down there, Kalchik thought.

“What’s the saying, boys?” Morgan asked his crew. “At 7:30—we got this. At 9:30—we never had this.”

By 2:30 p.m., the Clark County Sheriff’s Office had announced evacuation orders for over 30,000 people, from Washougal in the east to the suburbs of Vancouver to the west. Then, while Kalchik’s crew was rushing back to Larch, the call came down to evacuate the prison.

The Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) activated its emergency operations to help evacuate the 230 incarcerated men at Larch, along with dozens of corrections officers, counselors, and prison personnel. 

It was the first time since Larch first opened its doors over 60 years earlier that it had been empty, nothing in the halls but the stench of burning earth and the sound of dry wind howling against steel. 

Almost exactly one year later, on October 10, 2023, Larch would empty again—this time permanently—when DOC formally closed the prison, citing budget pressures and declining incarceration rates across the state.

The decision to shutter Larch was hailed by many prison reform advocates across Washington. But in Clark County and communities around the prison, news of Larch’s closure was met with concerns about wildfire response in the region. 

Throughout the summer and into the fall of 2023, a debate enveloped the southwest corner of Washington—a debate in which the state’s reckoning with its legacy of mass incarceration and prison labor collided with the rising threat of devastating wildfires across the American West.

Without those crews from Larch, who would fight fires in southwest Washington?

A weathered sign pointing to Larch Corrections Center, located in Yacolt Burn State Forest (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

LARCH

LARCH CORRECTIONS CENTER got its name from nearby Larch Mountain, which got its name from the thick stands of Larch pines that crawled down the spine of the Cascades into southwest Washington. 

Every fall, Larch needles turned a bright, brilliant yellow, earning them the nickname “the Golden Larches.”

Sometimes, they’re called “the Fiery Larches.”

The facility opened in 1956 on a small plot of land in the heart of Yacolt Burn State Forest near the border of Clark and Skamania counties. It was originally built as a work camp to house and train incarcerated men aiding reforestation efforts in the wake of the infamous Yacolt Burn, a collection of wildfires that torched over 200,000 acres across three counties during the summer of 1902, baptizing the forest in the process.4

Elika Omeli first landed at Larch in the early spring of 2021 and didn’t like what he saw.

Born and raised in Tacoma, Omeli was more accustomed to running down the bleached pavements of his neighborhood streets than hiking across forest floors.

Omeli had heard about the DNR Camps program while serving the first five years of his sentence at Walla Walla Penitentiary.

Arriving at Larch, Omeli was surprised by the loose collection of foam green buildings hemmed in on all sides by gently sloping hills thick with verdant stands of fir and pine trees. It looked more like an army barracks or a sleepaway camp than a prison.

Still, he wasn’t sure Larch—or the Camps program—was really for him. He’d heard about how hard the work was, fighting fires for weeks on end through the summer, spending every winter out in the cold rain planting saplings or chopping up wildfire fuels.

“At first, I didn’t want to do it,” Omeli said. “Just hearing how hard the work was. You’re out there just cold, stuck in the rain, climbing the mountains. Everybody just came back looking miserable.”

But shortly after he arrived, he found himself getting drawn to the program. Camps offered something besides a chance to earn some money and the coveted “good time” on his sentence.

Raised in a Polynesian household that valued family, hard work, and responsibility to others, Omeli was drawn to the sense of brotherhood and community service that the Camps program seemed to foster in a lot of the guys.

“Watching guys go out and fight fires,” Omeli said. “Watching that bond and that brotherhood … and all the things they get to learn. That’s what really made me interested.”

Less than a month after arriving at Larch, Omeli was the program’s newest recruit.

A barracks at Larch Corrections Center (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

ORIGINALLY NAMED OFFENDER Honor Camps, the Correctional Camps Program was established by the Washington State Legislature on April 1, 1939.5 The program was meant to be rehabilitative, with an emphasis on treating participants with dignity. 

Camps members were empowered to work the lands “without guards of any kind or barriers.” They were to be referred to by name, not by a number, and they were paid for their labor.6

The Honor Camps also filled an urgent need for the state. With firefighting at the time largely left to volunteers7—especially in more rural, sparsely populated areas—Washington needed a stable, cost-effective labor force to respond to wildfires.

Following their inception, the camps proliferated in rural areas across the state, and by the mid-1960s, incarcerated crews had become the main source of firefighters for DNR, with over 500 workers operating out of as many as a dozen different camps.8

Beginning in the early 1980s, Washington’s incarcerated population began to rise exponentially as the “tough-on-crime” movement swept across the country. Between 1980 and 2016, the number of people in the state’s prisons rose by 332 percent.9 

By the time Elika Omeli arrived at Larch in 2021, only four camps remained—Larch, Olympic Corrections Center in Forks, Cedar Creek in Littlerock, and Airway Heights Corrections Center just outside Spokane.10

According to DNR, working at the camps “helps incarcerated individuals avoid idleness while providing cost-effective work on state and other public lands.”11

Mark Huston, the current manager of the Camps program for DNR, started as a crew boss in 2006, regularly leading incarcerated hand crews out of Cedar Creek into Capitol Forest to plant trees, fight fires, and treat unhealthy forest land. 

Huston described the program as an opportunity for incarcerated individuals to learn valuable work skills, engage in teamwork, and contribute to the communities they serve.

“We build skills, work ethic, job skills that can be taken,” Huston explained. “Now they’re applying for jobs and folks are hiring them.”

Back in 2006, Huston said, Camps crews were making about 60 cents an hour. 

Almost two decades later, incarcerated firefighters were earning more, thanks to a 2021 bill passed by the State Legislature12 that raised pay for Camps crew members to the equivalent of local minimum wage (around $16 an hour) when actively fighting fires.13

Whatever the task—planting trees in the spitting rain, clearing trash off local roads, chopping up overgrown forests with chainsaws—the hours were long and the work was hard, occasionally grueling. Plenty of guys quit after just a few weeks on a crew.

“There’s all sorts of guys that’ll quit,” Huston said. “They’ll work for you for a week or two and then they’re like ‘No, I’m not working for DNR.’”

But Huston also saw plenty of new recruits thrive in the program, working their way up from the back of the line to leadership positions over the course of a single fire season.

“To see a guy basically start off with zero knowledge, zero experience, zero work ethic, and nine months later he’s your second lead,” Huston said. “He’s training new guys. He’s shown that he’s a leader.”

Elika Omeli turned out to be one of those leaders. 

Once in the program, Omeli got hooked fast—galvanized as much by a newfound purpose as by a paycheck.

He quickly took to the work and to life at Larch, which was considerably better than what he’d endured at other facilities. He took classes in business and sustainability and began working to earn his GED.

Lauren Zavrel, who ran the GED program at Larch from 2016 to 2023, remembers Omeli and the work ethic exhibited by many of the Camps crew members.

“I was always impressed by their capacity for really long, hard working days and the work ethic they managed to keep when they were tired,” she said. “For the most part, those were my best students.”

During her tenure at Larch, Zavrel transformed its education program, boosting Larch’s graduation rates from 15 percent to 85 percent in less than eight years.14

Shawn Piliponis was a corrections specialist at Larch for more than a decade, running its Sustainability in Prisons project, a collaboration between DOC and The Evergreen State College that brought sustainability and environmental programs into prisons.15

“I was interested in finding gainful employment for the inmate population,” Piliponis said. “As well as education and treatment, including mental health.”

When he wasn’t studying or working, Omeli bonded with other Polynesian inmates—creating gifts in his arts and crafts classes to give to his son, Lotu, when he visited and teaching others about Samoan culture and dance. 

“A lot of people, they fall away from their true roots,” he said. “When you get mixed up in the prison systems … you slowly forget where you come from.”

The racial stratification he’d witnessed at other facilities didn’t exist at Larch. The Camps program forced guys from all kinds of backgrounds to work together on the same line, to watch each other’s backs, to be a team.

That sense of teamwork and belonging inside the prison was matched by a sense of appreciation and respect outside of it, by the communities being protected—and, at times, saved—by the incarcerated hand crews at Larch.

Following the Nakia Creek Fire in 2022, people around Clark County put signs in the windows of their homes, thanking the incarcerated firefighters from Larch.

Jayme Morgan, Omeli’s crew boss that season, remembers watching guys experience pride and feeling valued, some for the first time in their lives.

“Every single house in the entire neighborhood had [those signs],” Morgan said. “Those guys would be lying [if they said] that that didn’t mean the world to them.”

Omeli soon began to think that firefighting could provide him with a real career path after he got out. During his second season at Larch, he started hearing about Arcadia 20, a new unit operating out of the Brownstone Reentry Center in Spokane.16

Formed in 2022 from top Camps recruits across the state, ARC 20 was designed as a transitional unit to train the best, most dedicated participants in more advanced firefighting techniques and to help ease their pathways out of incarceration and into employment—oftentimes with DNR. 

Paul Kalchik was a member of the ARC 20’s first class of recruits, spending 18 months at Brownstone, accelerating his training and earning enough qualifications (“quals” in firefighter speak) to get a job as an engine lead with DNR Wildfire after his release.

“It definitely gave me a sense of purpose,” Kalchik said about his time with ARC 20. “From formerly incarcerated to now, I’m a first responder. I’m doing something to actively give back to my community.”

Omeli wanted to do what Kalchik and others like him had done. He wanted a career. He wanted to make a difference.

The remains of a home burned during the Tunnel 5 Fire in Skamania County (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

WILDFIRES AND PRISON LABOR

IN WHATEVER WAYS men like Omeli and Kalchik benefited from the Camps program, the State of Washington benefits as well—supplied with a steady stream of firefighters at a time when wildfires are rising on both sides of the Cascades.

In 2023—for the first time in recorded history—more fires sparked on the west side of the state than on the east.17 

Historically protected from large wildfires by a steady stream of cool, moist air blowing in from the Pacific, western Washington is now nearly as susceptible to ignitions as the central and eastern parts of the state.18 

The incarcerated hand crews at Larch responded to 46 fires throughout the summer of 2023,19 more than double what they’d encountered either of the previous two summers.

As climate change has accelerated over the past decade, states from California to Georgia have been increasingly leaning on prison labor to beat back the rising tide of wildfires.20

Across the country, federal, state, and local agencies are struggling to hire new wildland firefighters, at the same time as many veterans of the field are quitting, no longer able to cope with the long hours, dangerous work, and—most of all—unsteady paychecks.21

Most wildland firefighters in America are temporary workers—hired each spring in advance of wildfire season, then laid off once temperatures begin to cool in October and November. As a result, career firefighters are constantly having to find other jobs to sustain themselves through the winter months. 

Even while on the job, earning money is a challenge. 

In 2022, the Biden administration raised baseline pay for federal firefighters from $13 an hour to $15.22

Due to low base wages, many firefighters have to rely on overtime and hazard pay to approach anything close to a livable wage, especially as the cost of housing and other expenses has exploded in the rural, Western areas of the country where firefighters are needed most. Over the past three years, the U.S. Forest Service has seen a 45 percent attrition rate among its full-time employees.23 

This year, unprecedented efforts by the Trump administration to downsize the federal workforce have led to mass firings at the U.S. Forest Service24 and a delay in hiring for federal firefighters.25

As the number of civilian firefighters dwindles, incarcerated hand crews are increasingly becoming the first—and last—lines of defense against the growing threat of wildfires.

In California—which has had its own Conservation Camps Program since 1915—incarcerated firefighters helped respond to over 7,200 wildfires across the state in 2024.26  For their labor, they earned between $3 and $5 an hour, with an extra dollar or two added when fighting fires.27

In some states, like Georgia, incarcerated firefighters don’t get paid a salary at all.28

But low—or no—pay is only part of the problem. 

Many states offer no concrete pathways for formerly incarcerated firefighters to gain employment in the field after release, even for those with years of experience. Laws restricting employment and job training options for former felons are serving as roadblocks in states across the country.

With incarceration rates below the rest of the country29—and its recent commitment to raise pay for incarcerated firefighters—Washington is ahead of the curve.  Still, many criminal justice advocates decry the use of prison labor, particularly in a job as taxing—and dangerous—as wildland firefighting.

“It is coerced labor,” said David Trieweiler, a criminal defense attorney with over 30 years’ experience in courtrooms across the state. “You can’t get all your ‘good time’ without programming and labor, [and] we’re not really paying a minimum wage. We’re paying $1.50 for most of the time they work.”

Trieweiler leads the End Mass Incarceration Project, a Washington-based criminal justice and sentencing reform organization. As of the end of 2024, the state’s incarcerated population hovered near 14,000 people.30 After several years of post-pandemic decline, incarceration rates have begun trending upward again.

“The state has not really taken significant steps to undo the legacy of mass incarceration,” Trieweiler explained. “All of the sentencing laws that were the cause of mass incarceration are still on the books.”

Still, many advocates on both sides of the debate believe that incarcerated firefighters occupy a unique space in the prison labor conversation, a conversation that spilled into the open on June 26, 2023, when DOC announced that it was shuttering Larch in less than three months’ time.

CLOSURE

THE WORD CAME down in whispers, in rumors that passed swiftly down the hallways of the prison.

Jayme Morgan—who’d been working as a crew boss at Larch for several years—first heard about it from a guard with whom he’d become friends.

“Hey, we’re shutting down,” the officer said as he passed Morgan in the hallway one morning in late June. The words hit Morgan like a punch to the gut. 

The Fourth of July was only a few weeks away, when the sparks from unattended grills and poorly rigged Roman candles would announce the unofficial start to Washington’s wildfire season.

“We’re supposed to have our heads screwed on right,” Morgan remembers thinking. “And now we not only have us losing our jobs, but … these guys on our crews that have really earned their keep and become a unit, they’re looking around at each other like, ‘Where am I gonna end up?’”

DOC had previously closed Larch’s Elkhorn Unit in 2021, cutting its population in half. The department had also shuttered minimum security units at Monroe Correctional Complex in 2021 and closed down the McNeil Island Corrections Center in 2011.

Two years later—on June 26, 2023—the department announced in a press release it would be shutting Larch Corrections Center down in October, less than five months later.

Citing declining incarceration and recidivism rates, DOC Secretary Cheryl Strange described the closure as a sign of the department’s successes, while acknowledging that those successes meant that it could “no longer afford to operate all the prisons we currently have.”

The announcement came as a shock to many, inside and outside of the prison. 

“There was no concern over what these guys [will] do when they transfer,” Lauren Zavrel said.  “Other facilities don’t have the programs we’ve built. It was devastating.”

Scott Sorenson, the fire chief for Clark County’s Third Fire District, began fielding concerns from people across the county. 

“The public thought it was not good,” Sorenson said. “They weren’t happy to see the crews go. They wanted to know that [the crews] were here for firefighting.”

Sorenson had been fighting fires in Clark County since he was 18 years old. Over his four decades as a firefighter, he’d noticed a rise in fire activity across the county—especially in the last five years—and was concerned about what the loss of the Larch crews would mean for the area.

“Without them, it really kind of changes,” Sorenson said. “Oftentimes, there’s not enough to go around. In the case of Larch, they usually had some crew around that could at least start action. But now they’re not there.”

For the incarcerated men inside the prison, news of Larch’s impending closure meant a sudden upending of their lives, their education, and their jobs.

Elika Omeli remembers feeling disbelief, then anger. Like a lot of the other guys on the inside, he thought it was just another rumor, another round of budget cuts. But then he started noticing corrections officers disappearing and not coming back, and people taking equipment out of the buildings.

“It didn’t make sense to us,” he said. “Why would they close this down? This is an important camp to have in this area. There are no other hand crews.”

Lauren Zavrel remembers many of the men being moved to tears at the prospect of moving away, no longer able to finish what they’d started through the facility’s education and tutoring programs.

“Throughout the summer, it was really hard for guys to focus,” Zavrel said. “They were really scared of where they would end up.”

On the morning of September 29, 2023—after several months of rallies and last-ditch legal maneuvering—the last remaining inmates at Larch were herded onto white buses and driven away from the prison.

As the buses drifted away from the facility, a small group of demonstrators perched across the road from the facility held up a large banner that read “Our Community Needs Larch.”

“WHERE AM I GONNA END UP?”

IN THE NEARLY two years since Larch shut down, former residents have been transferred to other facilities and former staff members have scattered across southwest Washington and beyond in search of other jobs.

Lauren Zavrel moved to Portland following the closure and now works as a college success coach at Portland Community College.

Shawn Piliponis has remained with DOC, working in case management services. He is also currently serving on a task force—commissioned by the State Legislature in June of 2024—convened to make recommendations for alternative uses for Larch post-closure.

The communities around Larch have spent the past 20-plus months adjusting to life without the prison crews and the services they provided.

Scott Sorensen, chief of Clark County’s Third Fire District, said that 2024 was a relatively quiet wildfire season for southwest Washington, with manageable fire activity across Clark County over the summer.

However, the loss of the resources and crews from Larch has already caused strain. Without the Larch crews available to assist with wildfire response, more responsibilities are falling to local and county fire and emergency responders in the region than ever. 

As temperatures rise and forests dry out across southwest Washington, the lack of crews at Larch could impact response times, leading to larger, more severe fires—a pattern almost certain to repeat itself across the state, and the country.

“Response will be different. It’ll probably take longer,” Sorensen said. “And, in certain circumstances, fire development will continue while we’re waiting.”’

For prison reform advocates like David Triewieiler, Larch’s closure signals a step in the right direction towards undoing the difficult legacy of mass incarceration in Washington State.

“We have to educate the public in the futility of the system of mass incarceration,” Trieweiler said. “It does not do what people think it will do. The vast majority of people who commit crimes are not monsters. They can change and turn their lives around, and they don’t need 40 years in prison to do it.”

Paul Kalchik finished his time with Arcadia 20 in March of 2024 and quickly found a job working for DNR as the wildland fire engine lead for the South Puget Sound Region’s Capitol Unit, stationed in Lacey. 

Whenever his unit works on a fire alongside the Camps crews from Cedar Creek, he makes a point to talk to the guys about his time in the program.

“I’m pretty open about my history,” he said. “It’s pretty cool for them to be able to see me in my position. It wasn’t even that long ago that I was on the other side of the fence wearing red.”

Following Larch’s closure, Elika Omeli was transferred to Olympic Corrections Center near Forks on the Olympic Peninsula. He spent about five months at OCC before being selected to join the Arcadia 20 transitional crew in Spokane. Jayme Morgan wrote him his referral to the program.

Since joining ARC 20 back in March of 2024, Omeli has continued to hone his skills as a firefighter—taking more advanced wildfire courses, learning how to operate a radio while on fires, earning more certifications and quals.

He finished his work release in January of this year, and—when his contract with ARC 20 is up this month—he’s hoping to take what he’s learned and land a job as a crew boss.

“Once I’m done with Arcadia, I do wish to have my own little hand crew,” he said. “I do wish to be able to be in charge of a fire, to call the shots and have people trust me even more.”

He’s looking forward to finding his own apartment on the east side of the state, to spending more time with his son, to launching his career as a wildland firefighter.

“It really just humbled me,” Omeli said of his newfound career. “It made me re-evaluate my life and made me realize this is a career. You fall in love with this job. Realizing how important it is to be a wildland firefighter.”

Elika Omeli, a member of the ARC 20 crew (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

WILDFIRE READY

It’s late April 2025, the start of another wildfire season is approaching, and Paul Kalchik is standing between a giant dog and a giant bear, smiling for the camera.

It’s launch day for Wildfire Ready Neighbors,31 DNR’s wildfire community resilience and readiness program, and Kalchik is there representing DNR’s wildland firefighters. He’s standing alongside Dave Upthegrove, Commissioner of Public Lands for Washington State, as well as fire safety mascots Sparky the Fire Dog and Smokey Bear.

He’s a long way from his time in Spokane on the Arcadia 20 crew, even longer from his time at Larch and the flames of Nakia Creek.

In many ways, Kalchik is one of the Camps program’s biggest success stories—from incarceration to transition to employment at DNR as a wildland fire engine lead. He’s what advocates talk about when they talk about rehabilitation, about lowering recidivism, about utilizing the criminal justice system as a means of reform rather than punishment.

“I wish I had found this a lot earlier,” he says about his new career. “But things happen for a reason, and I’m glad I’m here where I am now.”

This spring, with cuts to the U.S. Forest Service and a delay in hiring seasonal firefighters, Washington’s federal partners struggled to ready themselves to respond to wildfires on federal lands for the summer.32

A state budget crunch recently led state legislators in Olympia to slash forest health and wildfire prevention funding—from $125 million each biennium to less than half that amount.33 The funding cuts will leave DNR less able to pursue the kind of treatments, prescribed burns, and thinnings that reduce wildfire fuels and make forests and landscapes more resilient to burns.

For his part, Omeli says he’s ready to finish his last season with ARC 20 and has been spending time with other work-release members of the crew, talking about their plans when they finish their time in ARC.

“You talk about just getting out of here,” Omeli said. “Being able to drive to work instead of being bused. Being able to be back with our families … being able to find a house or apartment to live in. Having something where we can bring our family value. Showing them our improvements and what we’ve learned.”

Larch Corrections Center, abandoned, empty, and overgrowing with weeds and vegetation (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

AS OF NOW, there are no plans to reopen Larch.

Currently, the facility stands empty, with foam green paint chipping from the buildings and weeds snaking their way through cracks in the walkways.

On the other side of the hill, the burn scars of the Nakia Creek Fire still stand—long streaks of black and brown carved into the green expanse of the Yacolt Burn State Forest.

On a clear, calm day in early spring—over a year and a half since Larch emptied for what may be the last time—the sky is blue, and a cool wind carries across the quiet landscape. 

At the top of a hill on the north side of Forest Road 1000, a leave island of blackened trees sits stark against the pale sky, looking like giant spent matches stuck into the ground.

Suddenly, a bluebird flits across the sky and alights softly on a branch on one of the charred trees, its blue feathers brilliant against the blistered trunk. It pauses for a moment before taking off again, flying over the burn scars of Nakia Creek. 

It’s heading somewhere east, where new fires wait to ignite and smolder, where trees wither from heat and whole landscapes gasp for water.

Beyond the mountains, eastern winds begin to gather and churn. Soon, they’ll peel across the plateau, crest over the mountains, and spill sere air across southwest Washington like an arid whisper.

The forests will dry out, the leaves will wilt and curl, the moisture will evaporate from the air, from lips, from throats.

Someone will light a sparkler near a pile of dry leaves, or forget to fully stamp out the campfire, or toss a match to the ground without blowing it out first. 

Another fire will start, soon to be named for whatever nearby river, tunnel, or town it devours the most of.

The incarcerated men of Larch won’t be around to do anything about it. But others will be called—consenting or coerced, volunteered or voluntold, indebted or indentured—to do one of the hardest, most dangerous jobs imaginable.

Because someone has to, right?

A leave island of burned and blackened trees in the scar of the Nakia Creek Fire (photo courtesy: Quinlan Corbett).

Footnotes

About the Author

Billy Finn is a Seattle-based writer, actor, and musician. He’s written for campaigns and candidates from New York to Seattle and his writing has been featured in The Nation, The Stranger, The Seattle Times, The Urbanist, The Guardian, and many other publications. Currently, he serves as the chief speechwriter to Dave Upthegrove, Commissioner of Public Lands for Washington State.

Categories: Partner Feeds

A Total Dumpster Fire (in a Good Way!)

WA DNR News - September 4, 2025 - 3:09pm

By Celesta Collacchi, DNR Forest Resilience

Department of Natural Resources Arborist and Urban Forestry Technician Celesta Collacchi discovers the benefits of the Air Curtain Incinerator (ACI) and hopes to bring them to urban and community forestry work here in Washington.

Earlier this spring, I was reading the May 2025 edition of the Oregon Tree Health Threats Bulletin. An article in the bulletin proclaimed that using an air curtain incinerator (ACI) was significantly cleaner than traditional pile burning.

This caught my attention, as I had never heard of the equipment before, and the accompanying photo promised a literal dumpster fire.

Washington’s urban and rural forests face mounting challenges—from increased wildfire risk to invasive pests like emerald ash borer (EAB) and Dutch elm disease (DED). Cities are increasingly tasked with removing hazardous trees quickly, but that’s only the first step. The bigger question is how to responsibly manage the woody debris from pruning, removals, storms, pests, and development.

Traditionally, tree debris is chipped, landfilled, or burned. But chipping or hauling infested wood risks spreading pests; composting isn’t always permitted for contaminated material; and open burning is heavily restricted in urban areas.

Air curtain incinerators are designed to do just that.

These combustion systems burn woody debris in a contained metal box or trench while a high-velocity “curtain” of air blows across the top. This curtain traps smoke and particulates, cycling them back into the combustion zone, which results in hotter, faster, and nearly smokeless burns. The intense heat breaks down pests and pathogens like EAB larvae, DED fungal spores, bark beetles, and Phytophthora, neutralizing threats at the source and reducing emissions to a fraction of traditional open burns.

A diagram of an Air Curtain Incinerator (ACI). These combustion systems burn woody debris in a contained metal box or trench while a high-velocity “curtain” of air blows across the top.

I attended an ACI demonstration at the Scappoose Airport in Oregon, where a project was underway to remove invasive English holly (Ilex aquifolium) from the understory of Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) habitat. The airport worked with a local environmental company to handle the woody debris. A small front loader was on site to scoop up holly slash and place it into a mobile incinerator, which resembled a halved metal shipping container. The slash was burning inside, but almost no smoke was visible, despite the active flames. 

The demonstration instructors explained that the incinerator has a horizontal fan that generates a powerful and consistent gust—or “curtain”—of air that moves across the top of the enflamed debris. The air hits just below the far wall of the container, bounces back, and cycles the smoke downward into the flame zone.

The air curtain traps particulates, increases oxygen supply, and creates a hotter, cleaner, more complete burn. According to the ACI emissions results, the process remarkably reduces emissions to mostly water vapor. The opacity of the smoke was highlighted by the demonstration being located at an airport—which remained open to air traffic. 

An ACI being used at Scappoose Airport (photo courtesy: Celesta Collacchi). 

The ease and immediate benefits of using an ACI in urban and community forest management are seen in Portland, for example. ACIs were used to dispose of ash trees (Fraxinus) infected by the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis). The mobile unit is towed behind a standard pickup truck and placed on-site with minimal ground disturbance.

At Scappoose, six acres of holly slash were reduced to less than three cubic yards of moist, carbon-rich biochar in only a few days. This biochar can be left on-site or used as a soil amendment, supporting a closed-loop ecological system. Operators must obtain a few permits, including an air quality permit and a burn permit. Opacity reports are required during operation, and local fire departments are alerted in advance as a precaution.

Public awareness of ACIs has been limited, partly due to past misclassification under the Clean Air Act as major polluters. Oregon was once among the more restrictive states, requiring a costly Title V permit. Excitingly, a recent change enacted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) means ACIs no longer require a Title V permit. Washington’s Department of Ecology is also updating its outdoor burning rules (WAC 173-425 and 173-430) to potentially refine the permitting process.  

ACIs have excellent potential for vegetation management within wildland-urban interfaces, larger-scale pest management efforts, and high air-quality-control burning.

As cities respond to growing tree removal needs due to drought, storms, pests, and aging infrastructure, ACIs offer a scalable, mobile, and environmentally sound disposal option.

They allow:

On-site destruction of pest-infested trees,

Safer sanitation staging during outbreaks or storms,

Reduced risk of illegal dumping or pest spread.

Though still limited in Washington, ACIs are in use by private operators, federal recovery crews, and fuel reduction programs. These units can be deployed within hours and handle several tons of debris per day, making them ideal for storm recovery and wildland-urban interface zones.

ACIs are more than burn boxes; they’re tools for resilient, equitable forest management. They help cities reduce risk, control infected wood, and clean up storm damage in ways that support public health and environmental goals.

Cities across Washington are currently seeking designated sites to bury elm wood infected with Dutch elm disease, an accepted method of disposal. Meanwhile, some municipalities plan to leave the trunks of removed ash trees on the adjacent homeowner’s property.

In contrast, ACIs offer a more secure and efficient solution with complete onsite disposal of infected wood. The transformation into biochar is a far more practical and beneficial product for homeowners than immovable logs that cannot be cut and transported as firewood.

Washington’s Department of Ecology is moving into the final stages of developing new ACI rules. Over the coming months, staff will review feedback, revise the draft language, and prepare a final proposal. Once adopted, the rules will be added to the Washington Administrative Code, with implementation expected in early to mid-2026. Outreach and training will follow, ensuring cities, contractors, and forestry crews can safely and legally deploy ACIs for cleaner, pest-free wood waste disposal.

More info can be found at: WAC 173-425-430-400 – Washington State Department of Ecology.

About the Author

Celesta Collacchi earned her degree in Forest Ecosystem Science from SUNY-ESF, holds a Foundations of Utility Vegetation Management Certificate, and has over a decade of experience as an ISA-certified arborist. Her career has taken her across the country as an inventory arborist, utility forester, and Forest Service crew lead, with experience in both urban and traditional forest management.

Categories: Partner Feeds

Moments, Issue I

WA DNR News - September 4, 2025 - 2:55pm

Edited by Tracey Izatt, DNR Communications

A small collection of photos highlighting moments from across the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Pictured: A nest of hungry western Meadowlark chicks, Camas Meadows Natural Area Preserve, May 2025.

“I took this photo while I was monitoring a wetland vegetation community plot. I love seeing wildlife use the areas that our Natural Areas team works so hard to restore and preserve.”

Kimberly Quayle, Natural Areas Unit-Eastside Assistant Ecologist

Pictured: Scooper # S-445 (previously “Fire Boss”) coming off the Hope Fire north of Kettle Falls in the Northeast Region. Omak Airport, July 8, 2025.

“I try and get some good pictures at sunset if the situation presents, like a good sunset picture with some rays going through the clouds.”

Michael Williams, Recreation Specialist

Pictured: Diablo Lake Overlook off North Cascades Highway, August 5, 2025.

“I am on the Fire Cache driver list and was tasked for a delivery to the Stud Horse Fire in Winthrop when I took this photo. This shows one of the many raw beauties this state has to offer with the awe-inspiring color of the water against the forest.”

Gabe Baez, Emergency Management Specialist

Pictured: A heartfelt welcome from the Squaxin Island Tribe at the DNR Tribal Summit, Shelton, June 2025.

“A tribe’s connection to their land and their history is unmatched. The raw emotion you see as she told her story pulled you in and set the tone for the conversations had at the Tribal Summit.”

Faith Hardersen, Senior Social Media Manager

Pictured: A brother and sister enjoy Bring Your Kids to Work Day at the Natural Resources Building in Olympia, April 2025.

“I was asked to take photos and video for Bring Your Kids to Work Day. I enjoy photographing children and youth, as they tend to be very natural on camera.”

Tracey Izatt, Communications Specialist

Categories: Partner Feeds

Youth Education and Outreach Program Leads Wildlife Camera Project in Toutle Lake

WA DNR News - April 4, 2024 - 4:11pm

Toutle Lake Middle School students are introduced to the work of researchers seeking to identify the best location for a wildlife crossing during the fall of 2023. Photo: Clare Sobetski, DNR

It’s a Monday afternoon in late January 2024. Bailee Perleberg’s classroom at Toutle Lake Middle School is abuzz with nervous energy as students put final touches on presentations and finish illustrating their wildlife crossing designs.

The students are about to share their final projects with a panel of experts including Glen Kalisz and Anna Arensmeyer from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), Brian Stewart from Conservation Northwest, Fraser Shilling from UC Davis, and Clare Sobetski from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The students have spent the first part of the 2023-2024 academic year participating in a research project to identify the best location and design for a wildlife crossing over or under Interstate 5. The classroom projects are inspired by the ongoing work of the Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group. Comprised of government, nonprofit, tribal, and academic partners, the group is working to identify undeveloped areas along I-5 that are heavily trafficked by wildlife.

The southern linkage, a priority area of study near the Cowlitz and Toutle rivers, is only 20 minutes by bus from Toutle Lake Middle School. This makes it an ideal location to bring students out for hands-on educational activities associated with ongoing research. Including students in the research was a priority for Shilling, a professor at UC Davis and a lead researcher on the project.

“Including students in environmental research like the I-5 Wildlife Connectivity Project helps empower them to make a difference,” Shilling said. “It helps them understand the problems that wildlife face as they move through the landscapes around us … For their families and communities, student inclusion in research helps demystify the scientific process, reducing barriers and making scientific knowledge accessible to more people.”

Art created by Toutle Middle School student Corban depicting a group’s design for a wildlife crossing over the highway. Photo: Will Rubin, DNR

The multi-partner collaboration with Toutle Lake Middle School is an ideal example of project-based learning DNR looks to support with its Youth Education and Outreach Program (YEOP). Connecting Washington students with natural resource professionals for outdoor, educational activities related to authentic land management needs is a growing point of emphasis for the agency.

Quality project-based learning starts with a great launch event. For these students, that event took place in October of 2023 when students met with professionals on DNR-managed land to learn about the research project, install their own wildlife cameras, and practice identifying animal signs like tracks and scat.

The students impressed the professionals by demonstrating how much they already knew about local wildlife and how quickly they could interpret camera images. The four cameras the students installed during the field trip weren’t just for show – they are part of the larger, ongoing research project.

They returned to the site about six weeks later to retrieve the memory cards from their cameras and learn how to translate images into a data sheet for analysis. There was a good deal of enthusiasm as students pulled up the images on tablets to see what exciting wildlife their cameras captured.

“Of the four cameras installed by the students, one documented an elk, which was only the second camera of over 40 in the study area to do so,” said WSDOT Habitat Connectivity Biologist Glenn Kalisz. “Another camera documented a cougar, which was the second cougar documented west of I-5 out of over 20 cameras and many monitoring days. We’re getting good data out of it!”

As part of this second field experience, students also toured infrastructure that local wildlife is currently using to traverse I-5, including the underpass at the Toutle River bridge. This information informed their final presentations, as all students chose an overpass design because of the drawbacks of a dark and loud underpass.

Students visit the Toutle River bridge site to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the current infrastructure wildlife uses to cross the highway. Photo: Clare Sobetski, DNR

Students who participated in this hands-on learning module were all enrolled in Perleberg’s natural resources class at the middle school. The class is part of the school’s Career and Technical Education offerings. Perleberg designed curriculum and facilitated classroom learning about local wildlife species, population dynamics, and human impacts to support the outdoor experience. Perleberg also worked with YEOP staff to develop a plan for students to deliver final presentations to project partners before the end of the semester.

Presentation groups sorted by the four cameras installed by the students created slides addressing three key topics: why a wildlife crossing on I-5 is necessary; what the data from their wildlife camera revealed and what limitations the data carried; how the data students gathered should inform the design of a wildlife crossing. Each group was responsible for the creation of charts and graphs to visualize their data, as well as an artistic rendering of a wildlife crossing.

A prolonged snow and ice storm in January threw a wrench into the project timeline, but the students pushed through to finish their work in time for final presentations. All the partner organizations agreed the multi-pronged effort was a roaring success.

“I saw the students light up,” Perleberg said. “They were excited to have an experience outside and to participate in hands-on learning. As a teacher, I am trying to create functional members of society. In this project, my students had a chance to learn about things that matter to their community and that have real-life applications.”

This initial collaboration went so well, in fact, that all of the partners committed to a second iteration this spring for students in Perleberg’s second semester natural resources class. That project will adopt a similar structure but include more resources for students to learn about considerations in wildlife crossing design and more data analysis of the tracks and scat they observe.

“I hope these field trips inspire the students to get outside and start making observations about wildlife,” Arensmeyer said. “Engaging students in this manner can also be beneficial for kids that don’t thrive in a traditional classroom setting and provides them with a learning experience that might be more conducive to their learning style.”