2007 Is Another Record Fire Season
October 30th, 2007

The National Fire Information Center reports this morning that the acreage burned by wildfires in 2007 in the U.S. is now approaching 9.2 million acres.

To date more acres have been burned by wildfires this year than in any since the early 1950?s, save for last year, when 9.7 million acres burned.

This year marks the third year in a row that more than 8 million acres burned and fourth this century. Of the ten worst fire years in post WWII history, seven have occurred since 1995.

Average fire size in 2007 again topped 120 acres per fire for only the second time in modern era. In 2005 the average fire size was 130 acres per fire.

In 2007 there have been 77,000 wildfires nationally. This is far below the 50-year average of 127,000 fires per year. In terms of fire starts, 2007 was a very mild year.

Despite the relatively few fire starts, acreage burned this year is more than twice the 50-year average of 4.5 million acres per year. Average fire size is fully three times the 50-year average of 40 acres per fire.

With only 60 percent of the average fire starts, 2007 should have been a mild fire year. However, due to a national policy of Let It Burn, numerous small fires were allowed (encouraged) to become megafires.

The USFS announced last fall that they intended to burn Idaho severely, and then in the middle of the 2007 fire season declared Idaho forests to be national ?Let It Burn Laboratories.? And Let It Burn they did! Over 2 million acres in Idaho were burned deliberately in this fashion by the USFS, including 1,250 square miles of the erosion-sensitive Idaho Batholith in the Payette, Boise, and Nez Perce National Forests.

Official statistics regarding home and structure incineration have not been released, but at least 2,000 private homes were destroyed this year in Federal fires.

Pronouncements by Federal officials following massive home destruction events have been to blame the homeowners for living too close to mismanaged and holocaust-prone Federal lands.

Solutions proffered to the crisis include the elimination of fire suppression and the condemnation of all private land west of the Mississippi, although how these might put the fires out is unclear to rational observers.

Most Federal officials agree vociferously that the national firefighting community is entirely incompetent at fighting fires, and that the entire nation is at risk from lack of capacity, skill, and general wherewithal on the part of sad-sack stumble-bums in the Federal fire and forest employ.

The Federal Judiciary has moved to dis-rectify this situation by banning the use of fire retardant and jailing fire managers, apparently in the hopes of incinerating whole forests as well as cities and counties in regional firestorms.

It is a very sad situation when government officials do their damnedest to destroy the very country that gave them so much power and riches. Apparently not enough government officials? homes burned down this year, so no particular message was sent by the people to the obsequious arsonists and incendiary plutocrats in charge. That may very well change in the future as more and more burned-out citizens see clearly who and what were actually to blame for their losses.