Fifteen-year-old Courtney Dastian and her 12-year-old sister Ashley were home alone last week as a raging forest fire crept closer and closer to their house in Red Lodge, Montana. Fire fighters told them to leave quickly. "It was freaky," says Courtney. "My sister and I were digging our rooms apart to make sure that we weren’t leaving anything behind that we might miss." Their parents came home and drove the family off to find safe shelter.
Christopher Atherly and his family also ran scared. The 8-year-old packed up his Legos and a few action figures and left his home on August 27. "I was thinking about how fast the fire was moving," he says, "and what it would be like if our house did burn down."
Hundreds of families across the West have been forced from their homes by the worst outbreak of wildfires in 50 years. From January through August, 74,000 fires have burned nearly 6.4 million acres of U.S. land, an area as big as Vermont.
Long-awaited but light rain slowed down some of the fires last week. Such rains "aren’t going to be a knockout punch, but they’ll help," says Rick Ochea of the National Weather Service. Experts expect the fires to blaze until October, when heavier rain and snow will arrive.
Who Turned Up the Heat?
Wildfires are a part of the natural cycle of forests. They help clear dead trees and make way for new growth. But this year the fires were out of control. Hot, dry, breezy weather out West helped fires start and spread quickly. Dry thunderstorms formed, producing little or no rain but plenty of lightning. When lightning hits dry ground, it lights a fire.
Experts say the forests had an unusually large amount of burnable material. Three years ago, a climate shift called El Niño brought a lot of rain that helped small trees and plants, called underbrush, grow fast.
Human error made the fires worse. Most people agree that in recent years fire fighters have put out too many small fires. If those fires had been allowed to burn, they would have cleared some underbrush.
Montana Governor Marc Racicot criticized President Bill Clinton for setting aside too much protected land, where loggers can’t cut down trees or build roads. "Roads are crucial not only in fighting forest fires but also in promoting forest health," said Matt Raymond of the Governor’s office. On the other hand, environmentalists say the big trees that loggers cut down are quite fire resistant and it’s the underbrush that’s feeding the flames.
In the Line of Fire
There are about 26,000 fire fighters working to put out the flames that have engulfed the West. More than 1,200 fire engines, 240 helicopters and 42 airplanes are on the job. Fire fighters have come from New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The U.S. armed forces are helping too.
Fire fighters called smoke jumpers parachute from planes into remote areas to build “fire lines” of dirt around the blazes. They cut down and remove plants in a two- or three-foot-wide line in front of the fire. The goal is to rob the fire of fuel and stop it from advancing. "We’ve gone up and down, up and down, very steep hills," says smoke jumper Murray Taylor. "Everybody’s exhausted from the 18-hour shifts."
To make sure that fires don’t start again in areas that have already burned, the fire fighters use “cold training.” They take off their gloves and feel the ground for smoldering hot spots that could flare up again.
This is the most expensive fire-fighting operation ever. It costs as much as $18 million a day! The government estimates that the total cost will soon be more than $1 billion.
Despite the dangers of living in the wildfire zone, many families can’t wait to return home. Bob and Phyllis Fritzel have a summer home near Black Hills, South Dakota. The log cabin has been in the family since 1947. They left it last week, but Bob says they’ll go back no matter what. "We’ve decided that if we lose our place, we’re going to rebuild it."