Eight Big Wildfires of the Last Century
*Summer 2004 Alaskan Wildfires – 6.6 million acres
A warm and dry summer contributed to an incredibly active wildfire season in Alaska. A total of 710 fires burned – 426 were caused by humans and 275 were caused by lightning. The three largest fires were the Boundary Creek Fire, Dall City Fire, and Bully Creek Fire, which covered almost 1.5 million acres. More than 2,700 firefighting personnel were involved. There were no fatalities.
* Great Fire of 1910 – 3 million acres
Strong winds on August 20 – 21st spread fires across millions of acres of forested land in Montana, Idaho and Washington. As a result, 86 people were killed; many of whom were firefighters. The Great Fire of 1910 helped establish the US Forest Service..
*Summer 2008 California Wildfires – 1.56 million acres
The state of California spent roughly $1 billion and the US Forest Service spent about $700,000,000 to fight the summer ‘08 blazes, which started in Monterey County where more than 2,000 fires were started by a dry-lightning storm. It was estimated that more than 2,300 structures were destroyed.
*Yacolt Burn – 1 million acres
The Devil Wind from Eastern Washington helped propagate fires in the southwestern counties of the state on September 11th, 1902. Millions of dollars of timber were lost, and 38 people died. Before the disaster, there was no one responsible for dealing with wildfires in Washington. In 1903 a state fire warden was established.
*Yellowstone Fires of 1988 – 793,880 acres
By the end of the summer of ‘88, 36 percent of the park was burned by seven major fires. The most destruction occurred on Black Sunday – August 20th – when high winds caused more than 150,000 acres to burn. More than 25,000 firefighters from various states attempted to extinguish the fires, which didn’t cease until November when rain set in.
*Murphy Complex Fire – 653,100 acres
The largest fire in Idaho in almost 100 years was a product of six lightning-caused wildfires. It started on July 16th, 2007 near the Idaho-Nevada border, and it burned hundreds of thousands of acres of private, public and state land. Grass, brush and juniper ensured that the fire burned for more than two weeks.
*October 2007 California Wildfires – 500,000 acres
A year before the destruction that occurred in the summer of ‘08, October fires engulfed 1,500 homes in Southern California , killing nine people. Half a million people were forced to evacuate as the fire spread across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
