There are currently 100 large active fires across the West.īeyond the incredible loss of life and property, breathing in wildfire smoke can cause serious health issues. And in Washington state, an unprecedented 480,000 acres have burned just in one week. In Oregon, 900,000 acres have caught fire, causing half a million people to evacuate, which is more than 10 percent of the state’s population. According to The New York Times, that is 20 times more than what was burned last year and a modern record. In California alone, more than than 2.5 million acres have gone up in flames. more than 5 million acres have burned during this year’s fire season, which runs from May through September. The National Interagency Fire Center finds that in the western U.S. The Oregon Department of Forestry is following large active fires, as is the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Washington State. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) is tracking containment efforts for all wildfires and providing updates on evacuation orders. Western states offer maps with near real-time data as well. (ESRI also has a map with local disaster response data). ESRI adds that when zoomed-in, users can see additional fire data from NOAA/NASA satellites, which detect the locations of recent “thermal activity” that indicates fire direction. Smoke forecasts are incorporated from the National Weather Service and show 48-hour forecasts updated every hour. Smoke forecast / ESRIĪccording to ESRI, the sources of fire data in the map are the Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information (IRWIN) and the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) - both of which are updated every 15 minutes. Another layer provides a smoke forecast for any given location. The map indicates each fire’s estimated start date and its current level of containment. And human activity in the wildland-urban interface keeps creating new sparks: downed electrical lines have set many blazes, while, infamously, a gender reveal party with a “pyrotechnic device” created a massive conflagration.Īmid the continuing devastation, an interactive map from ESRI, which creates geographic information system software, enables users to track active fires by name or location in near real time and sort by timeline and magnitude. Heat waves over the summer dried out much of Western forests, which were already impacted by years of drought and bark beetles. According to experts, there are a number of reasons: climate change is creating the underlying conditions for more extreme weather events. California, Oregon, and Washington, along with nine other states in the West are now experiencing record-breaking wildfires.
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