Wildfire Season: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Here in the West, you don’t have to ski to be excited about all the mountain snow we’ve gotten. The official snowpack figures have been encouraging. This means there might be enough water come spring and summer to ensure a healthier natural environment – which, in turn, could mean a less crazy wildfire season.

The 2015 fire season was termed “historic” in the Pacific Northwest. Just in Oregon and Washington, more than 3,800 wildfires burned more than 1.6 million acres.

I was one of many reporters across the West who scrambled to cover them. I kept having to add new names to the list of fires and their respective communications officers taped on my wall.

I spoke with attorneys who offered free legal advice for anyone who’d lost a home or other property to the fires. I interviewed some fire crew members from other states who were a little homesick not to be barbecuing in their own backyards over Labor Day, but resolute in their desire to help the local people wherever they’d been planted.

The U.S. Forest Service has just released what it calls an interactive story map that summarizes the 2015 wildfire season. It’s definitely worth a look, and includes a link to the full 280-page report on the season.

In September, I recall talking with a woman on the 65,000-acre Carpenter Road fire near Fruitland, Wash. She was from Arizona, but said she’d definitely be back someday to go fishing. “The local people have been amazing to us,” she said. “And it’s a really, really pretty state.”

The fires do some heart-wrenching damage, but they also show the remarkable bonds and spirits of local communities, and the impressive organizational skills of the firefighting agencies. The latter, of course, are already planning for whatever comes their way this summer.