Burning hotter, longer
Parched rangeland, forests spawn more severe fire seasons
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Thursday, October 25, 2007 1:06 PM PDT
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| A firefighting vehicle drives past backfires set Wednesday, at Camp Pendleton, Calif., next to the north side of Interstate 5 near the base’s checkpoint in an effort to control the fires on the base. Longer, drier fire seasons have become commonplace since the turn of the century, touching off speculation as to why and how long those conditions will affect the United States. |
ONTARIO — Wildfires are growing in number, and they are typically burning hotter and longer as fuel loads build up in forests and across the vast rural steppe of the American West.
“Fire seasons are longer and hotter,” Randy Eardley, spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise confirmed.
And those fuel loads, Eardley said, play a key role in the intensity of the wildland blazes.
“We have a tremendous fuel load. There is more acreage burned every year,” he said.
Annual statistics provided by the National Interagency Fire Center support Eardley’s views.
For example, a survey of statistics going back to 1960 shows that fires consumed more than 5 million acres nationally only eight times in the past 40 years.
From 2001 to 2007, however, the number of acres scorched by fire exceeded 5 million acres five out of seven years.
As of today, there are 76,575 fires recorded for 2007. That number is less than the 86,184 blazes logged in 2006. So far the total number of acres scorched by fire for 2007 is less than the total number of acres burned in 2006, though the Southern California blazes will push the final figure higher.
In 2006 about 9.369 million acres were burned compared with about 8.346 acres burned to date this year, with 16 fires still active, all but one of them in California. That fire is situated in Arizona.
According to NIFC statistics, the five-year average is 67,273 fires in a year, with about 7.418 million acres burned. The 10-year average is 70,168 fires burned. While 1,439 fires were recorded for Idaho, 2,404 fires were recorded for Oregon, but the acreage burned in Idaho was more than 1.9 million acres, compared with about 588,522 acres for Oregon.
The dry fuel loads and hot temperatures had at least one fire in Idaho this year burning until the first snow. While resources may have been stretched thin at times this past season, Eardley said, crews were able to meet and overcome a variety of challenges.
“We certainly had everything we needed to respond when we needed to,” he said.
NIFC is coordinating the resources being sent to Southern California to help fight the fires there, Eardley said.
“We try to pull them from areas closest to the fires,” he said.
A couple of crews were being sent from Oregon and a couple of engines from Idaho, he said.
Mike Morcum, BLM Vale District fire management officer, agreed the fuel load on the rangeland can be a factor.
However, Morcum noted the amount of fuel load changes from year to year, depending on the moisture. Locally, weather plays a pivotal role with rangeland fires, he said.
“For us, most of the fires are caused by lightning,” Morcum said.
Morcum said when there are a larger number of thunderstorms, there will likely be a lot of fires.
