Insider Blog: Hotter weather and expanding suburbs reshape wildfire threats

Wildfire season used to have a shape.

It started in late summer out west, it stayed out west, and by fall, it was over. Now, that shape is gone.

Columbia Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer says the U.S. is currently operating at PL5, the highest wildland fire preparedness level, meaning resources are stretched so thin they have to be rationed. Dozens of wildfires have burned over 1.6 million acres in Oregon and Washington.

Across the pond, more than 300,000 people evacuated from parts of Spain and France due to extreme megafires in the region. Europe is reeling from its hottest June on record; France is dealing with its worst wildfires since World War II, and the Madrid region is recording its worst fires in history.

"It's an unprecedented fire season," Schaeffer said. "I'm sure you're going to get tired of hearing it, because I'm tired of saying it."

The reason, he says, starts with warming temperatures. Hotter, drier conditions are changing how fuels behave, how fast fires spread, and how far flames can travel in a single burn period.

But climate isn't the only thing that's changed. So has where we live. Neighborhoods have expanded into fire-prone terrain, turning what used to be brush fires into structure fires. "We used to talk about trees being fuel and brush being fuel," Schaeffer said. "Now we're talking about homes and neighborhoods."

There are tools to fight back, such as aggressive forest management, controlled burns, and logging in areas where it's safe to do so. We know those practices work.

The problem is funding. Federal land management agencies have lost staff for years, even as demand for prescribed burns and fuel treatment has grown. "It takes FTEs, it takes people," he said, "and our federal services... have been reduced pretty significantly."

Fire is also showing up in unusual places nowadays. Schaeffer points to Minnesota and Wisconsin as some of the most significant fire challenges of the year so far, but that's nowhere near the traditional fire belt. "It's not a West Coast problem," he said. "It is truly a United States of America problem."

That is reshaping how the federal government organizes itself. Roughly 75% of the agencies once responsible for wildland fire that were previously siloed across different departments have been consolidated under a single Wildland Fire Services agency, run by one fire chief. The goal, Schaeffer says, is to finally treat wildfire as a national issue instead of a patchwork of state and regional responses.