Wildfire Update

Wildfire Update

Wildfire Update. I'm Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.

It's been one heck of a summer for firefighters in the Pacific Northwest and Washington State saw it's fair share of heat. At one point it seemed the rest of the world thought Washington was going to be burned off the map. Janet Pearce, Communications Manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources says while things are looking much better, DNR's burn ban expired last night at midnight.

PEARCE: Even with that we still have parts of Eastern Washington that are still very dry so if people want to have a campfire anything like that they need to be very cautious and check with the landowner first.

At present there is only one major fire still burning names the North Star fire 25 miles north of Coulee Dam and it's about 95% contained.

PEARCE: We had over a million acres in Washington burn this year and what we're going to be doing this year is working with the legislature, hopefully we can get more resources next year because we're going to expect the same type of fire season as we had this year.

Ok. A few startling figures here.

PEARCE: Our first fire this year was January 24th. Washington had 1,462 fires and with that number, the alarming number here is that 1,011 of those were human caused. DNR's cost is estimated to be possibly $100-million and I think the total estimate cost for Washington State is somewhere around $250-million.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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