SPOKANE, Wash. — A serious wildfire that broke out near Malaga in central Washington last week is not necessarily a harbinger that Washington will have a major fire season.
“We’re supposed to have an average fire season,” said Janet Pearce of the Washington Department of Natural Resources. “It all so depends on lightning and people being safe.”
But she acknowledged that the fire near Malaga, which burned 2 square miles of brush, did seem a bit early in the season for such a blaze.
The state does not do its own wildfire forecast for the year. Instead, it uses the predictions produced by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
In its forecast for the Northwest, the NIFC said the greatest early fire danger appeared to be in south central Washington in July and August. The forecast said “above normal” fire potential was likely there in that time period.
Precipitation during the month of April was above average in most of Washington, the fire center said. However, “sections of central Washington remained relatively dry.”
“Climate outlooks for May through August point to warmer- and drier-than normal conditions over Oregon and Washington,” the fire center said.
Low snowpack and dry conditions “may boost the potential for possible fires during dry, windy conditions,” the fire center said.
Wildfire season actually began on April 15, and the DNR had already battled 20 small fires this year on state lands.
The Malaga fire started Wednesday afternoon and burned power poles and power lines, knocking out electricity for a time to hundreds of homes and the Alcoa aluminum smelter near Wenatchee. The fire is believed to have been caused by lightning hitting a power pole.
Helicopters were brought in to battle the blaze.
The fire was mostly contained by late Thursday. No homes were burned and no injuries were reported.
Last year, a total of 764 fires burned approximately 126,219 acres of DNR-protected lands, the agency said. Of those, 94 percent were contained to less than 10 acres in size.
Seventy percent of the wildfires on DNR-protected lands last year were human-caused, the agency said.
The agency said dry and unhealthy forests in Washington will remain a fire hazard for many years.
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