New Hampshire hasn’t seen the large wildfires that increasingly plague the world, but this summer’s drought is a reminder that we can’t take this for granted, especially as the woods fill with people on a holiday weekend.
“N.H. wildfire risk remains elevated due to extended drought conditions” was the headline on a Thursday news release from the New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau.
That may not be surprising after a summer-long shortage of rain that has seen many creeks and ponds shrink to almost nothing.
But shortly after that statement landed in email in-boxes, the daily Fire Weather Forecast from the same group landed, saying the fire risk that day was “low” in the northern third of the state and “moderate” in the rest — much less than the three other possibilities of high, very high or extreme danger.
This wasn’t a mistake. The daily Fire Weather Forecast has given the risk as low or moderate for most of the summer, despite the drought. But it seemed to clash with the department’s other release.
So which is our fire danger — extreme or moderate?
Both, in a way. But for you and me, it’s the “extreme” that matters.
The five-level fire danger rating has been around since 1974 to give firefighters a rough idea of conditions in their area so they can plan any response. Lower categories mean outdoor fires will spread relatively slowly, making them easier to put out, but it doesn’t mean they can’t happen.
Fire officials are cautioning us this weekend partly because Labor Day crowds but also because the drought has made it easier for small fires to linger, unnoticed, until they’re no longer small.
“It is important to note that even though the fire danger may be low or moderate, fires which are left unextinguished will continue to burn and slowly spread in the dry ground. During droughts, this is what we commonly see. These fires may burn (smoldering) for days or weeks during low and moderate fire danger and can be 1 or 2 acres in size and burn 1 to 2 feet deep before being discovered. These fires can take days to dig out and extinguish,” wrote Steve Sherman, chief of the state Forest Protection Bureau, in an email response to the Concord Monitor.
New Hampshire’s lingering dry weather, which is an outright drought in the south and Seacoast, hasn’t created fire danger like they have out west, where a single match can create an inferno in almost no time. But it has created a situation where it’s more likely that small mistakes can create a major problem.
The Forest Protection Bureau says that “90% of wildfires in New Hampshire are human-caused,” most often by campfires but also by such things as sparks from lawn care equipment hitting dry grass.
So even though the wildfire risk may be moderate as far as emergency-service planning purposes go, people in the outdoors should act as if the risk is much higher.
New Hampshire averages 250 wildfires a year. Most are relatively small, just an acre on average, but even those take a lot of effort — meaning a lot of local tax dollars — to put out.
Occasionally they are bigger: This spring the Centennial Fire in Shelburne and the Bemis Fire in Crawford Notch resulted in a total of 153 acres of damage.