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Winds, no rain, forecast for fires

West is on highest fire danger alert; more crews, equipment are brought in

NBC's Chip Reid reports Thursday from the site of an Oregon wildfire, one of dozens across the West.

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Aug. 16 — Eleven new large wildfires were reported overnight, as tired firefighters across the West were being told to expect windier conditions and no rain relief for at least a week. The West is already under the highest possible fire danger alert, prompting officials to consider calling in U.S. military troops to join 20,000 firefighters and National Guardsmen in battling dozens of blazes.

      A COLD FRONT is expected to move into Oregon and Washington, the states with the biggest battles, and while that should lower temperatures by Friday it should also bring winds that fuel some of the fires there, Roger Erb of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service told NBC’s “Today” show.
      On Wednesday, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, put the fire danger at the maximum alert level of five. That meant fire agencies were being strained to the maximum by the demand for resources, and cleared the way for military firefighters to be dispatched.
      Fire officials were throwing everything they could at the rash of wildfires and said that dry lightning storms expected this weekend could ignite a new round of blazes. And weather forecasters said the outlook was poor for any significant rain before the middle of next week.
      Firefighting teams across the region were boosted by some 3,000 people overnight as crews were flown in from as far away as Alaska.
      Sheri Ascherfeld, an official at the National Interagency Fire Center, said U.S. firefighters were running out of personnel, fire engines and firefighting helicopters, prompting officials to begin talking to their Canadian counterparts about borrowing equipment to help battle the blazes.
      “The resources are stretched thin. We are pulling in crews from all over the country, but the number of crews still available is dwindling,” Ascherfeld said, adding that estimates of the total cost thus far were $189 million.

‘IT’S A MESS’

      Oregon has already requested troops and equipment from state Army and Air National Guard units.
      “It’s a mess,” said Charles Gulick, a spokesman for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
      Washington was one of the states where thousands of firefighters on Thursday were battling major fires made worse by dry heat.
      The 40,000-acre Virginia Lake complex in north-central Washington is the state’s worst-hit area. Fire there has destroyed at least six homes and is threatening dozens more. State and federal land managers have closed campgrounds, hiking trails and roads in eastern Washington.
      By Wednesday, firefighters were battling 44 large fires — the biggest in northern Nevada, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and Northern California.
      A new 60-day outlook by the center advised firefighters to be prepared for another long fire season, one that extends through fall, should late summer rains not develop in the Northwest and Northern Rockies.

      While this year’s fire season is hitting its peak and could get worse, it’s far from matching last year’s fire season — the worst in 50 years. This year 2.1 million acres have burned compared to 5 million acres last year at the same time. The 10-year average for this period is 2.5 million acres.
      Some 1,000 Western fires have been started by scattershot lightning strikes since Saturday. While most were quickly extinguished, several are burning through unusually dry forest in drought areas of the Northwest and Northern California.
      “With hot temperatures and dry fuels, there is a big potential for fire, particularly in the Northwest,” Nancy Lull, a spokeswoman at the fire center. “They didn’t get the snow pack that they normally get, which means the fuels dry out earlier, which means more fires.”
      Other states were told to remain alert as well. “Very high to extreme” fire indices were reported Idaho, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

MAJOR HOT SPOTS:
      Northern California: Major fires had consumed more than 126,000 acres, mostly in the northeastern part of the state. In the Sierra Nevada, however, a relatively small fire caused severe traffic backup as authorities closed a major highway leading from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco because of fire.
      Officials said Wednesday that the I-80 roadway was being gradually reopened to traffic near Emigrant Gap in the Tahoe National Forest, although there were still major delays as firefighting crews sought to put out “hot spots” that continued to burn, many of them along the roadway’s median strip.
      Oregon: Nine major fires consumed some 102,000 acres. At one of the largest, the Lakeview Complex in Lake County, more than 800 firefighters were battling an interconnected network of five major fires and had it about 30 percent contained, officials said.
      But one of the fires, known as Big Juniper, had raced east, consuming eight miles through dry sagebrush and desert grassland, said Chris Papen, a spokesman for the Lakeview firefighting team.
      Nevada: Crews in Nevada said they had contained a 82,000-acre grass-and-brush fire 17 miles north of Battle Mountain and were turning their attention toward a nearby fire that was 25 percent contained at 11,000 acres. Fires have burned at least 200,000 acres in Nevada since last week.
      But elsewhere in Nevada, the historic mining hamlet of Midas was still threatened by a group of fires that had blackened 30,000 acres and was only 10 percent contained.
      Washington: Dry lightning and heat had created ideal fire conditions east of the Cascades and officials remained concerned about major blazes near the Colville Indian Reservation that had already burned six homes and threatened up to 50 more.
      Other fires were reported burning near Leavenworth and Yakima, leaving the state with some 27,000 acres in flames and no single fire contained.
      Officials closed off a seven-mile stretch of U.S. 97 in north-central Washington because a fire was burning toward the highway. It reopened early Thursday morning.

Like many blazes in the West, lightning started this fire in north-central Washington.

GOVERNORS MEET
      The sudden burst of wildfires coincided with a meeting of Western governors and federal officials to discuss regional issues, among them how to prevent future blazes.
      The governors and the Bush administration agreed to a 10-year plan calling for the aggressive removal of brush, trees and debris that can fuel catastrophic fires. It also seeks a long-term strategy for restoring wildlife habitats.

		More on fires

		•	Nation's fires: National Interagency Fire Center

		•	Are we fighting nature?

		•	How a fire is fought

“It is a huge problem we have in this country that has built up over a century,” warned Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
      A recent report by the General Accounting Office noted that warnings of increasing fire dangers were issued in the early 1990s, and suggested that the various federal agencies responsible for handling fires lacked the “coordination, consistency, and agreement” to effectively implement the national plan.
      Among the issues raised by the report: Of 545 communities targeted at high risk for fires, over half were in parts the Southeast not prone to severe wildfires, and none were listed in California and Idaho, where large fires break out almost every year.

Wildfires live and die by the land, fuel and weather that surround them. The wrong combination could quickly turn a smoldering ember into a uncontrollable fast-moving inferno. Click on the diagram above to find out how or click the tabs at top to explore other topics.

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Source: National Interagency Fire Center, Firewise, MSNBC research

      The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.