Quiet fire season for Washington

OLYMPIA – A mix of preparation and good luck has led to the quietest Washington state wildfire season in 15 years, even after a severe drought had the state expecting the worst, state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland said Monday.

“A cannon-sized bullet we dodged, and we’ve dodged it now for five years,” Sutherland said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Sutherland said he and Gov. Christine Gregoire were so concerned about the potential for devastating fires that they requested from the Legislature, and received, an additional $200,000 in a supplemental budget to a $12 million two-year budget to help them prepare.

Record-low levels of precipitation and above-average temperatures in January and February caused unprecedented snow melt in the state’s mountains, leading Gregoire to declare a statewide drought emergency on March 10 as crews were battling half a dozen blazes in Eastern Washington.

“We were looking at a snow pack at about 15 percent of normal and in some places no snow pack at all,” Sutherland said. “So we knew early on that we were going to have difficulties.”

The snow pack serves as a water reservoir, slowly releasing water as it melts well into the summer months.

Under normal conditions, snow pack accumulates until about April 1, when it begins melting.

Days after the March 10 emergency declaration, it started raining, and the rain continued through June, which has helped ease the situation, Sutherland said.

Additionally, an early placement of firefighters around the state and a lack of lightning storms helped keep things under control. But Sutherland said the state’s not out of the woods yet.

“Fire season’s not over yet,” Sutherland said.

“It’s so unpredictable.”

The state Department of Natural Resources is the main on-call firefighting entity, with 1,200 crewmen who fight fires on 12 million acres of state and private land.

To date, there have been at least 813 fires that have burned at least 95,346 acres on state and federal land, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, which coordinates firefighters.

The final fire statistics won’t be known until the end of the year.

“It’s what you call a slow year for Washington,” said Pat Houghton, the center’s spokesman.

The 10-year average for the number of fires in the state is 1,467, with 145,389 acres burned.

The worst fire year in the state was in 1994, when 2,260 fires burned 495,812 acres.

Eastern Washington’s School fire was the season’s worst wildfire this year in terms of property loss.

It broke out Aug. 5 and burned nearly 50,000 acres and 109 residences before it was extinguished two weeks later.

The statewide drought emergency remains in effect until Dec. 31, and Sutherland said wildfires are a risk through next month.