Here in Oregon and Washington a week ago last Sunday we had several high base thunderstorms move through. For those of you who might not be familiar with the term “high base” thunderstorm they produce plenty of lightning but little or no rain. The result was a number of wild fires in both states burning thousands of acres and many structures. The cost of wild fires has been steadily increasing.
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The cost of America’s forest fires has more than quintupled in the past 20 years
Wildfires are scorching the earth and burning through the United States’ bank account.
More than 1.5 million acres of American forest have been burned to the ground so far this year, and that isn’t even all that much. Last year, nearly 4.5 million acres were scorched; the year before, almost 9.5 million.
Forest fires have destroyed some 143 million acres since 1985, or roughly 5 million acres a year, on average.
But we aren’t paying for them in forestry alone. The U.S. government now shells out some $2 billion a year just to stop them, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The total price, which includes wildlife preservation and land rehabilitation, is likely $1 billion to $2 billion more than that, according to estimates by research firm Headwaters Economics. Costs have ballooned so much that government agencies like the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have found themselves hundreds of millions of dollars short of allocated funding, and lawmakers have taken to using the term “fire borrowing.”
Of course there are several things contributing to this:
- Warmer winters give beetles a better chance to kill trees a dead trees burn faster.
- As baby boomers retire they frequently move to pristine areas and build houses leading to increase of structural damage.
- The increased severity of storms.
There are of course more. But it’s not just in the Pacific Northwest – California now has a fire season for most of the year and William deBuys discuses the wild fires in the desert SW in his great book A Great Aridness.
Some areas at low sea level have the opposite problem – too much water. As I noted here Miami and much of southern Florida may in the not too distant future may once again find itself part of the sea. We will probably make an attempt to mitigate the impact on New York City but this will cost billions of dollars.