Record heat, zero rain, millions of acres lost: Experts warn wildfires are now America’s problem to survive

Earlier this month, a balloon coated in aluminum foil—the kind normally seen at a child’s birthday party—drifted into the path of a transmission line, kindling an electrical spark that ignited dry vegetation nearby. Around the same time, a stray flicker from a welding tool landed on an equally parched forest floor several dozen miles away. 

The two wildfires—nicknamed the Highway 82 Fire and the Pineland Road Fire, respectively—have since bellowed into infernos, together consuming some 54,000 acres and burning down more than 100 homes as of this week.

Two things are unusual about these fires. One is the timing, as wildfire season historically kicks off closer to summer. The other is geography. These massive fires are not happening in California or Oregon; they are raging in Georgia, two of the 767 fires that have ignited statewide over the past 30 days. It is one of Georgia’s worst fire outbreaks in history, scorching more than twice as much acreage as the state’s five-year average, Governor Brian Kemp said this week.

Blazes in Georgia are part of a national early-season firefighting crisis. So far this year, nearly 23,000 fires have torched more than 1.8 million acres of land across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, double the 10-year average this early in the season. 

A combination of drought, dense vegetation in vulnerable states, and the effects of climate change has brought on an unseasonably ferocious wildfire season to parts of the U.S., said Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildland fire ecologist and executive director of the non-profit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. With the country’s firefighting services already strained, the devastation so far could be a prelude to an unusually intense summer as fires migrate west.

“We’re seeing a rapid increase in wildfire activity,” Ingalsbee told Fortune. “Wildfire has typically been perceived as just a western problem, but with climate change, it’s not just coast-to-coast. It’s global.”

It’s normal for wildfires to start earlier in the year........

© Fortune