People Partly to Blame for Fires
Aug. 11 -- On Wednesday, Clem Work and his family made a list of things they couldn’t stand to lose. Then they packed up their photographs, financial records and paintings and moved them to Clem’s office — away from their home near Missoula, Mont., and away from the reach of wildfires raging less than 35 miles south.
“It catches you up short to realize that fire could ruin your home,” said Work, a journalism professor at the University of Montana in Missoula. “There’s no immediate danger, but you never know.”
Seeking Out Rustic Settings
Like about 40 million other Americans, the Work family lives in a sparsely populated area near wild land vegetation. For many, these locations offer a rustic home setting. But as University of Montana forestry professor Ron Wakimoto points out, a house in a tree-filled setting is usually much more vulnerable to wildfire. And protecting these properties from wildfire can mean suppressing a natural cycle of smaller wildfires that are critical for burning up forest fuels and preventing uncontrollable infernos.
“People are seeking out of the way places to live where historic fire occurrences were pretty common,” he says. “That reinforces fire suppression quickly, and now when we have a year like this one, even more homes are in jeopardy.”
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there are now 20 large fires burning in the state of Montana. So far those wildfires have scorched 300,000 acres and burned down 52 homes in the state. Nationwide, 65 large wildfires are now burning across nearly 100,000 acres.
Ecologists say nature has something to do with this year’s unusually busy fire season. In states like Oregon, Montana and Utah snowpack in the mountains was lower than normal. That meant there was less water runoff when the snow melted. And in many regions snow and ice melted so quickly under a warm spring that soils did not absorb as much water as they might otherwise.
Popular Reads
ABC News Live