Officials from 13 different agencies that annually deal with wildland fires say this year could be a bad one.
They made the comments at the governor’s annual wildland fire briefing.
Chris Smallcomb of the National Weather Service said precipitation has been above normal, “but has not substantially reduced the drought.” What it has done, he said, is spur a lot of vegetation growth.
“There’s a lot of fuel out there,” he told Gov. Brian Sandoval. “We are so green right now, so wet that it’s going to take a while for that to dry out.”
But he said he expects average of higher fire activity in the Great Basin this summer.
“If we do go into a warm dry summer, then we could easily be very busy in Nevada,” State Forester Joe Freeland said. “The fuel loading looks a lot like 2005.”
In that year, he said just over one million acres of Nevada burned.
Last year, at the height of the drought, just under 43,000 acres of Nevada were burned.
Smallcomb and Jeff Marsolais, supervisor of the Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the U.S. Forest Service, said compounding the problem is the number of dead trees from drought followed by insect attacks.
“The main issue for long term drought is tree mortality,” he said. “That’s four to five years that one winter isn’t going to make up for,” said Smallcomb.
Marsolais said there could be up to 49 million dead trees in the southern Sierra by this year.
All those in attendance, however, said they are better organized and prepared to fight summer fires than ever before. Conservation and Natural Resources Director Leo Drozdoff said every agency from the federal government down to local agencies is cooperating fully to ensure a strong response to any fire.