Bad Fire Year in the West

As the month of August wraps up, the Oregon fire season has finally started to wane. having scorched about 100,000 acres.  The Southern Oregon fires are predicted to be fully contained by Labor Day, and the fire near the Dalles is now the first priority. 

In Idaho, Ron Wyden was at the fire command center in Boise, discussing the failure of forest thinning to prevent big fires.

But a decade of aggressive thinning and prescribed burning projects widely supported by the Western Governors’ Association and pushed by the Bush administration — and even many environmental groups — has not reduced the size or intensity of wildfires across the West.
Critics say Congress is to blame because it has cut funding for thinning and logging since timber harvest levels dropped in the 1990s.
Risch stood up Tuesday at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise with Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, who all said they will make fuel-reduction projects a priority in Congress this fall.
“The fires that are ripping their way through Oregon, Idaho, California and much of the West are proof that the federal government’s policies for fire prevention are broken,” Wyden said.
Simpson said the Forest Service isn’t to blame when Congress doesn’t provide enough money for firefighting, forcing the agency to take money from fire prevention and other programs.
Earlier this year, the Senate stripped out $97 million of fire-suppression funds that had been added by Idaho’s Simpson, chairman of the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. The budget bill passed without the fire money.
“You’ve got to quit stealing money from other accounts,” he said.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/08/25/2724601/flame-act-fails-to-curb-fires.html#storylink=cpy

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report predicts that the acreage burned by wildfires will double by 2050 to about 20 million acres annually. Another USDA report predicts that for every 1.8-degree temperature increase the earth experiences — expected by 2050 — the area burned in the West could quadruple.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/08/25/2724601/flame-act-fails-to-curb-fires.html#storylink=cpy

 Meanwhile the Yosemite fire in California is only 7 percent contained and the governor has declared a State Emergency.  Over 2,800 firefighters are trying to get it under control.

 The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise has added six new large fires to its list, two in California and one each in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Texas. The fire center reports that there now are 43 active large fires across the West covering more than 850,000 acres.

Oregon Burning

Fires in Oregon are being created as fast as firefighters can contain them.  Most are in Southern Oregon, but newer ones are also springing up in Eastern Oregon.  The Oregonian is reporting over a thousand lightning strikes in a 24 hour period, alongside the huge fires in Southern Oregon that have been burning over a week.

Elsewhere, firefighters are battling four big complexes in southern Oregon, one large fire in central Oregon and two big fires in Washington.
The biggest concern is the Douglas complex north of Glendale, which has scorched nearly 43,000 acres. About 470 homes and 40 commercial buildings are under some form of evacuation alert. The fire has destroyed two commercial properties and two other buildings, Mills said. But no homes have been burned.
The Douglas complex is 28 percent contained.

The air quality in Southern Oregon has hit hazardous levels, with little relief in sight.

Smoke from wildfires burning across the state prompted the Oregon Health Authority Public Health Division and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday to warn residents about risks associated with increasingly poor air quality.