Yellow Pine Corner Bar owner Vicki Martineau wants compensation for the hardship the small backcountry town suffered this year due to the fires that burned 600,000 acres in the Payette and Boise national forests.
"I don't know what I am going to do," Martineau said. "I don't need a loan, I think the county owes us for pulling the trigger way too fast."
She did not have exact figures for what she thinks the county should pay, but is pursuing the idea.
Valley County Clerk Archie Banbury said the only financial help available to residents come from low interest loans guaranteed through the federal Small Business Administration. Residents of Yellow Pine felt as though they were more under siege this summer from their government than the fires that raged around the small town, Martineau said.
This year's Harmonica Festival and Labor Day Weekend festivities were cancelled due to road closures from the fires. The area's hunting businesses have also been hurt by the fires.
Warm Lake Road was closed the day before the Harmonica Festival was to begin due to the North Fork Fire that had moved four miles in one day toward the highway.
The fire had moved to within two miles of Warm Lake Road at the time of an emergency meeting with Valley County Commissioners, Valley County Sheriff Patti Bolen and fire managers.
"We had to err on the side of caution and public safety," Bolen said. "I don't know what else we could have done, we had to look at public safety"
Commissioners were faced with either keeping the roads open and allowing more than 1,000 visitors into Yellow Pine and the possibility of having to evacuate a large number of people out of the area with limited road access or closing off the roads before the people were able to get into the area, commissioner Gordon Cruickshank said.
"If we would have allowed 1,000 people back there, we would have been putting them in harm's way," Cruickshank said. " I worried about the unknown and the people from elsewhere who wouldn't know where I ey were if an emergency occurred."
In mid-August, the town was told to evacuate due to the fires. Some residents decided to stay.
Fires cut power to the town for three days before a generator was brought into town to restore power. A week later, power was restored and the generator taken out. A couple of days later, fires burned through power poles again knocking out the power.
Road closures caused confusion among the residents of Yellow Pine. Town residents did not receive mail for six weeks.
If residents were allowed to leave town after the evacuation order, they had trouble getting back in, said Martineau, chair of the Village of Yellow Pine Association.
All the while, it took until Labor Day for the fires to reach trigger points the residents were told would lead to evacuations, Martineau said.
Negative Image Portrayed
Media coverage of the town under siege was mostly negative, painting the town residents who stayed as people defying the government rather than people staying behind to protect their homes and businesses, she said.
"We are not dissidents," Martineau said. "We are normal people that want to protect our property."
Willie Sullivan, an association council member, was frustrated with the local government's response to the disaster occurring several miles away from Yellow Pine.
Communication between the town residents and local government was lacking, Sullivan said.
Much information they said they received was false. The residents were told that boulders were on Johnson Creek Road on the last week of the fires. but they drove the road and found no boulders.
"They called it the bowling alley, but it was just not true." Sullivan said. "They just lied to us."
Both Martineau and Sullivan wanted to be a part of any decisions being made about the town.
They wanted their local government officials to take information from the residents of Yellow Pine and factor it in to the decisions.
Bolen said the last thing the county officials wanted to do was to tell the town they could not have their harmonica festival.
Bolen and Cruickshank have each asked festival organizers to plan the event at a different time of year since this was the second year in a row that forest fires have threatened the town in August.
