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Fire Season 2000 Highlights

• The season began early, when a fire in Florida was controlled at less than an acre.  
  The date?  January 1, 2000.

• LaNina, a pool of cool water in the Pacific Ocean, dictated much of the weather in the United States in the last two years.  LaNina typically means wet weather in the Northwest, and dry weather in the southern tier of states.  When LaNina begins to weaken, as it did last spring, it causes hot and dry conditions almost everywhere in the country.

• All the wrong conditions were in place last summer:  hot, dry weather; wind; low relative humidities; a source of ignition, in the form of dry thunderstorms that rattled across the West; and absence of the seasonal monsoons in the Southwest.

• You don't need to be a firefighter to realize what comes next when that combination is brewing:  fire, lots of it, over a wide geographic area.

• By the end of February, two 40,000 acre-plus fires had burned in New Mexico.  Twelve states experienced large fires...and it was still early in the spring.

• An escaped prescribed fire in Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, New Mexico, focused the eyes of the nation on fire in early May.  The fire burned 47,650 acres and destroyed 235 residences.  A moratorium on prescribed fire was put into effect.  The Cerro Grande fire was a harbinger of one of the most difficult seasons in the last half century.

• Generally, fire season migrates northward and diminishes in the South.  Not so in 2000.  By mid-summer, nine of the eleven "Geographic Areas" in the country had fires burning in them.  Only Alaska and the New England states were spared.  It's considered a serious fire season when three or four of the geographic areas are experiencing fires of 100 acres or more.

• All available resources--people and equipment--were committed by late summer.  Assistance from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico was welcomed.  Six battalions of the military were mobilized and sent to the firelines.  Top fire managers scrambled to meet needs, always while keeping protection of life as a top priority.  At the peak of the season, more than 500 new fires were reported on some days.

• On the peak day of the activity, August 29th, the snapshot looked like this:

  • 28,462 people were fighting fire

  • 667 crews were assigned

  • 1,249 engines

  • 226 helicopters

  • 42 airtankers

  • 84 large fires burning (100 acres or more)

  • 1,642,579 acres on fire in 16 states

• Then came the break that firefighters had longed for.  Just before Labor Day, an intense storm system formed in the Gulf of Alaska and tracked into the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rockies.  It brought rain to the lower elevations and some snow at the higher altitudes, and was followed by two more storms, although weaker than the first still a welcomed relief.  Although it would be another month before most of the major fires were contained, and new fires continued to be reported in the South, a corner was turned.  As experts had predicted in July, some fires were not put out until the snow flew.

• By all accounts, the 2000 fire season was long, difficult, and stretched resources to the breaking point.  Veteran firefighters reported burning conditions and fire behavior that they had never before seen...and hope to never see again.

• The work of restoring and rehabilitating land and resources continues.  Long after the last flames are doused, the vital work of healing the land continues.