Stats Shot: U.S. Wildfires Have Burned Over 5 Million Football Fields Worth of Land This Year
In this Aug. 3, 2015, file photo CalFire firefighter Bo Santiago lights a backfire as the Rocky fire burns near Clearlake, Calif. Josh Edelson / AP File Photo
By
Bill Lucia
As of Aug. 25, there were at least 68 large wildland blazes still active.
Wildfires scorched at least 7,602,256 acres of land across the United States between Jan. 1 and Aug. 26, according to figures from the National Interagency Fire Center.
That's more burned acreage than the center has recorded in that time period during any past year dating back to 2005. The second largest amount of land that was burned between those dates was 7,398,529 acres in 2006.
Having trouble imagining what 7,602,256 acres of land looks like? It's equivalent to about 5.7 million NFL football fields. Maybe that helps. (A regulation football field is 360 feet by 160 feet, or roughly 57,600 square feet, equivalent to about 1.32 acres.)
As of yesterday, Aug. 25, the National Interagency Fire Center was reporting 68 large wildfires in 11 states.
Some of these are "complexes" consisting of multiple blazes.
The fire on this list that has burned the most acreage is Washington state's Okanogan Complex, which is located about 11 miles northwest of the city of Omak and is believed to have been sparked by lightning on Aug. 15. As of Thursday it was about 17 percent contained.
The chart below displays the acreage that the 68 large wildfires have burned and to what extent each of them is contained.
The total fires the center documented between Jan. 1 and Aug. 25, as opposed to just large ones, amounted to 42,735.
That figure is actually smaller than the annual average for the ten year period between 2005 and 2014, which was 52,236.
But the lesser number of fires has not translated to fewer acres burned.
The average annual amount of acres hit by wildfires between 2005 and 2014 was 5,369,764, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The land burned this year already exceeds that amount by more than 2 million acres.
Bill Lucia is a Reporter for Government Executive's Route Fifty.
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