US Northwest towns ‘woefully unprepared’
ISSAQUAH, Wash, Aug 5, (AP): Nestled in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, the bustling Seattle suburb of Issaquah seems an unlikely candidate for anxiety over wildfires.
The region, famous for its rainfall, has long escaped major burns even as global warming has driven an increase in the size and number of wildfires elsewhere in the American West.
But according to experts, previously too-wet-to-burn parts of the Pacific Northwest face an increasing risk of significant wildfires due to the same phenomenon: Climate change is bringing higher temperatures, lower humidity and longer stretches of drought.
And the region is uniquely exposed to the threat, with property owners who are often less prepared for fire than those in drier places and more homes tucked along forests than other western states. In Issaquah and towns like it across the region, that takes a shape familiar from recent destructive California wildfires: heavy vegetation that spills into backyards, often pressing against houses in neighborhoods with few escape routes.
“The only thing that’s keeping it from going off like a nuclear bomb is the weather,” said Chris Dicus, a California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo professor and head of the Association for Fire Ecology, a national group that studies wildfire.
With historically short summers, the densely forested coastal territory stretching from northwestern Oregon to British Columbia has long been cloaked in a protective veil of moisture, making even mediumsized fires relatively rare.
But global warming is changing the region’s seasons. A national climate assessment prepared by 13 federal agencies and released in 2018 said the Pacific Northwest had warmed nearly 2ºF since 1900 and that trend would continue into the century, leading to warmer winters and less mountain snowpack.