fire prevention

With consistent cold weather, space heaters and other strategies to warm your home can put it at risk for a fire. According to the National Fire Protection Association, there is an increased risk of house fires during the winter. And house fires can create another problem for nearby residents.

Even as the fall season knocks on our door, fire dangers remain high and campers should be wary. One of the nation’s largest wildfires burning right now is the Moose Fire, just outside Salmon, Idaho. It blew up Wednesday night with driving winds, growing to more than 120,000 acres. Evacuations are taking place, and it is threatening municipal water resources.

Federal wildland fire forecasters have issued their summer outlook with a series of maps, showing ominous splotches of red that indicate above-normal fire potential expanding over much of the Mountain West.

New federal funding may help with forest and wildfire management, but there are still hurdles. Increasing firefighter wages still can’t always contend with skyrocketing housing costs and burnout from long seasons. Funds may also help pay for supplies, but supply chain issues still make certain supplies hard to get.

As wildfire season begins in earnest across parts of the Mountain West, firefighting agencies will also be battling the tightest labor market in decades and a housing affordability crisis. A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson at the National Interagency Fire Center, doesn't expect staffing to be an issue. She says that while fire seasons are becoming "fire years," the real focus is juggling and balancing the teams’ schedules.

Communities across the West typically have wildfire plans. They lay out how to evacuate, where to send people and what to do. But those may need an update.

A recent study called upon the Western U.S. to increase its prescribed burn practice as a preventative for large-scale wildfires. Prescribed burning is…