Maine’s coastal towns are putting new resources into reinforcing their shorelines and working waterfronts as climate change brings more destructive storms to their doors.
Nine are also working together to prepare for something different: a major wildfire.
The towns on the Blue Hill peninsula, along with the island of Deer Isle-Stonington, will spend the next 18 months developing a community wildfire protection plan that will be regularly updated.
By the end of it, they aim to have identified local wildfire risks, educated the public about ways to reduce them, created a list of shovel-ready projects, produced an online resource site with a progress tracker and maybe even increased participation in local volunteer fire departments.
The project is a response to a facet of climate change that may not be as visible in coastal towns, but is a growing threat as conditions change and development continues in the Northeast.
“The Northeast has a really cool opportunity to not be reactionary and to stack their cards in the right direction before a bad event happens,” said Arianna Porter, a project manager from SWCA Environmental Consultants in Scarborough who was contracted to lead the plan’s development.
The region’s last major wildfire was one of Maine’s worst: the 1947 blaze that burned more than 17,800 acres of Mount Desert Island. People may think it’s been so long it won’t happen again, but it’s possible, according to Allen Katz, a Brooksville resident who helps groups find funding for resiliency projects and is administering the Blue Hill plan.
“I think there’s a new recognition that this part of the country does have wildfire risk,” he said.
Today, about 70 percent of the county is forested, according to the Hancock County Emergency Management Agency. In its 2024 hazard mitigation plan, the agency highlighted a low to moderate likelihood of wildfires. The expected difficulty of fighting one ranged from low to “extreme,” particularly in the southern half of the county and on MDI.
It’s not clear yet how climate change will affect the odds of another major wildfire taking place, according to the agency, which also listed potential concerns about a decrease in the number of available firefighters. But the Northeast on the whole is seeing longer dry periods punctuated by short, intense times of rainfall that may not soak into the dry soil.
Community wildfire protection plans have been created across the country in recent years to prepare for such events with help from state and federal funding. The Blue Hill peninsula project received $250,000 in congressionally directed spending and more grants from the Maine Forest Service.
Katz sees those funding awards in part as a recognition of increased wildfire risk in the region and the peninsula’s cooperative approach to managing it.
“There’s no reason why we can’t get one if the factors align,” said Stefan Blanchard, the Blue Hill volunteer fire department’s senior captain, of a major wildfire.
Larger fires in the Northeast and in Canada have increased awareness of the possibility locally, he said.
Blanchard is one member of a 24-member advisory committee giving feedback on the local plan as it develops, along with area fire chiefs, first responders, land trust representatives and people with experience in forestry and corporate contracts. He fought a major wildfire himself last September, when the state sent him to help in southern California.
On the peninsula, forests have been able to build up more “fuel loads” near expensive homes, he said. Some of those houses are remote or not highly visible and only occupied seasonally, meaning if a fire does catch, it can take a long time for someone to notice.
“People don’t have eyes on every structure,” he said.
The department responded to one such fire on Easter Sunday that consumed a garage at a seasonal home. Started by a downed power line, it burned for hours before someone across the bay reported smoke.
Local volunteer fire departments are mostly focused on structure fires and generally respond to them more often than “wildland fires,” or fires that spread through vegetation, according to Blanchard. The two types require different training and equipment.
Jesse Minor, a wildfire specialist who works with Katz, said fires at this “wildland-urban interface” that combine the two are more difficult to respond to and contain. Additional training and managing risks will help reduce the likelihood of those types of fires mixing, he said.
Increasing development on the peninsula also raises concerns about access to houses and water sources along narrow or remote roads, though Blanchard said that isn’t a concern for his department so far.
Clearing vegetation around a building creates more “defensible space” in case of fire, which is one big step people can take to prepare, according to Minor.
The plan will also benefit the larger region if a wildfire does happen, according to Porter.
The strategies focus on landscape changes, public outreach and wildfire response. Potential projects could include clearing vegetation around houses and along evacuation routes, educating homeowners and working with schools.
Organizers hope community outreach for the plan will also increase participation in the area’s volunteer fire departments, which like others across the state have struggled with declining membership and the difficulty of covering calls when members have day jobs outside of town.
The project also stands out because it gives people concrete steps to take in response to climate change, said Porter.
“The coolest part about wildfire resiliency is that everyone has a role to play, and there are really actionable things you can do,” she said. “…I want people to walk away from this project more empowered.”
