Wednesday, July 18, 2018, 11:18 – TAOS, New Mexico (Reuters) – Bigger and more "explosive" wildfires are raging across the U.S. West, with the area burned in Colorado already four times the size of last year’s total, as rising temperatures, drought and a buildup of forest fuels supercharge blazes.
So far this year, 3.3 million acres have burned in U.S. forests, just below the figure for this time in 2017.
Around 2,600 homes have been destroyed nationally by fires year to date, according to Forest Service data.
Nine U.S. wildland firefighters have been killed up to this week, compared with 14 killed in all of 2017, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.
The number of wildfires larger than 25,000 acres on U.S. Forest Service land in the West nearly quadrupled in the decade to 2014, compared with the 1980s, according to data from the Department of the Interior.
The number of U.S. homes destroyed in wildfires almost tripled to 12,242 in 2017 from the previous year, according to U.S. Forest Service data, largely due to giant blazes in California that killed 43 people.
Nearly all of California faces abnormally dry or drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor agency.
The state has had its worst start to the fire period in a decade, with 220,421 acres burned through Thursday morning, according to NIFC data.
Millions of trees and bushes killed by California’s 2012-2017 drought are another fuel source.
Burning at thousands of degrees with 300-foot-high "tsunamis of flame" fanned by erratic winds, Brack called it the most "explosive" fire he has seen.