President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attend a virtual wildfire briefing with seven governors. CREDIT: Https://Www.Youtube.Com/Watch?V=PzvDeLvcQ7U The federal government is asking how it can help better fight wildfires […]Read More
“Wildfire is presenting an imminent threat to life, property, and the environment, and we need all hands on deck,” Gov. Brad Little said in a statement. “I appreciate our firefighters and fire managers for working so hard under such challenging conditions, and I am grateful that our guardsmen are able to step in once again to support Idaho communities.”Read More
The National Interagency Fire Center said Tuesday that it’s the second earliest it reached what it calls preparedness level 4 on the 1-5 scale since 1990. It’s also only the fourth time in the last 20 years that it has reached the level 4 in June.Read More
Just about every indicator of drought is flashing red across the western U.S. after a dry winter and warm early spring. The snowpack is at less than half of normal in much of the region. Reservoirs are being drawn down, river levels are dropping and soils are drying out.Read More
U.S. officials said Thursday they will try to stamp out wildfires as quickly as possible this year as severe drought tightens its grip across the West and sets the stage for another destructive summer of blazes.Read More
As the company weighs its options, two Washington state legislators sent a letter Tuesday to U.S. Congress members in Western states, urging them to find a solution to continue the SuperTanker’s operations, which they described as the “biggest and one of the best weapons in battling the catastrophic fires.”Read More
In the decades since government restrictions reduced logging on federal lands, the timber industry has promoted the idea that private lands are less prone to wildfires, saying that forests thick with trees fuel bigger, more destructive blazes. But an analysis by OPB and ProPublica shows last month’s fires burned as intensely on private forests with large-scale logging Read More
“In this year of, well, exceptions, we’ve been handed an unprecedented level of damage to our wildlife mitigation program,” a Washington state wildlife biologist recently told the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.Read More
Experts warn that Western states and the federal government need to radically increase the number and size of controlled burns to help reduce the ongoing risks of more catastrophic wildfire seasons. Read More
Many homeowners who lost everything in a wildfire had no idea they were at risk. Only two states require disclosing wildfire risk to buyers in the house hunting process.Read More
Malden is a tiny farming town amidst eastern Washington's "oceans of wheat fields" in Whitman County. Or it was. The 2020 wildfire season is a grim reminder that disasters unfairly hit the poor and the elderly. Thousands of people on the West Coast still lack even temporary housing.Read More
A Facebook page called “Baby Yoda fights fires” has been documenting his journey and spreading joy far beyond the fire lines. More than 30,000 people and counting are following the page as he travels from crew to crew.Read More
Nearly 300,000 acres in Washington burned in just one day over Labor Day weekend. That is almost unfathomable. But it happened. Why? What were the conditions that made for that explosive situation? Read More
On the other side of the country Joe Biden also addressed the fires, linking them to climate change. Read More
One hundred large fires are burning in 12 states across the West — but just five of them have been contained, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Read More
At least seven people have died in wildfires that are raging in Washington, Oregon and California, adding to the horrible toll from record-setting fires in 2020. "This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfires in our state's history," Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said.Read More
The Bureau of Land Management announced a proposal Friday that would fund up to 11,000 miles of strategic fuel breaks in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah in an effort to better control wildfires.Read More
It’s been a little over a year since the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise, which impacted thousands of lives in Northern California. The disaster also alarmed people across the West, who are now asking themselves: Could a fire like that happen here?Read More
Free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Read More
Prescribed fires are credited with making forests healthier and stopping or slowing the advance of some blazes. Despite those successes, there are plenty of reasons they are not set as often as officials would like, ranging from poor conditions to safely burn to bureaucratic snags and public opposition.Read More
Five years later, the Carlton Complex is still the single largest fire in Washington state’s history. By the end of summer, the Okanogan Long Term Recovery Group will have rebuilt 39 homes. The group’s contractors are putting the finishing touches on the final two homes now. They’ve held a ribbon cutting at nearly each spot.Read More
The entire town of 27,000 people was evacuated in front of the wildfire in Northern California. The fire is the latest in a string of disastrous wildfires to hit the state in the past year.Read More
More people are living in places that are prone to wildfires. That means during fire season, they live with the very real possibility of having to evacuate on very short notice.Read More
Federal officials anticipate a big wildfire season in the Northwest throughout July, August and possibly into September.Read More
Exasperated members of Congress say they came close last week to ending the longtime stalemate over legislation aimed at reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires.Read More
A fire fighter burns out fuel to create a containment line. Burning fuel that fires could use to spread is one of several methods to create a fire line, including […]Read More
