By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press Writer
YAKIMA, Wash.- Fire managers in the Pacific Northwest warned that the spring’s heavy rains wouldn’t prevent the summer wildfire season - only delay it.
Now, like tardy students late for homeroom, the fires are here, and officials say the season could extend well into September in some particularly parched areas.
“It is later. It’s not canceled,” said Rose Davis, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, based in Boise, Idaho. “Although we got that moisture in spring, you can’t undo the drought in one year.”
On Wednesday, the center listed fire danger as very high to extreme in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Of 35 large active fires burning in the country, 25 were in the Pacific Northwest or Northern Rockies.
The risk also was very high for parts of Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico, though the fire season is generally winding down in the Southwest, where it begins earlier and then faces summer rains.
So far this year, the number of fires across the West is below the 10-year average, but the number of acres burned is higher. A wet spring and early summer led to dramatic growth of fuels such as grasses and brush, which burn more quickly, Davis said.
“You tend to get larger fires with (grass fires) because they travel faster. Those are the kinds of fires we’re seeing so far this year,” Davis said.
In Washington state, plants gone brittle from drought crunch underfoot. Campfire restrictions have been imposed on state and federal lands, and some recreation areas have been closed to the public.
“Typically, in a normal year, we do a gradual restriction on campfires,” said Bette Cooney, spokeswoman for the Naches Ranger District in Washington’s Wenatchee National Forest. “But this year is a different year. Things are just really, really dry.”
Gov. Brian Schweitzer declared an emergency for wildfire danger in Montana, authorizing National Guard pilots to begin training to fight wildfires. They could be activated if local, state or commercial pilots aren’t available.
In Arizona, the wildfire season has been among the worst ever, based solely on acreage. Fires have burned mostly desert grasses, consuming vast acreage but relatively little timber and few homes. One fire alone in 2002, for example, destroyed about 465 homes; this year the count of burned homes from all fires is fewer than 50.
Similarly, the largest fire in the Northwest this week was burning largely in grass and wheat, but moving into timber. The fire exploded from 150 acres to about 32,000 acres, aided by winds that pushed it from gullies to dryland wheat fields and toward the Umatilla National Forest in southeastern Washington. It eventually consumed 41,000 acres and more than 100 homes _ mostly recreational cabins.
The fire was one of several in the West raising concerns, in part because forests have largely been spared so far this year.
“We had a really wet spring. It was long, it was cool, it was wonderful. So we didn’t really have a steady drying of things,” said John Townsley, fire information officer for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland, Ore.
“But there are some places ... where if the weather conditions continue to be warm and we have some good winds, we could still see some pretty good-sized fires.”
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On the Net:
National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov/