It was yet another expensive wildfire-fighting season, but early estimates indicate it won't be as spendy as some others in recent memory. Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers says preliminary estimates show the Forest Service went $200 million over budget this season. Congress authorized the agency to spend $995 million on fire suppression this fiscal year. That's compared to about $3 billion in recent years. Forest Service Region One spokeswoman Heather Noel says we were lucky this year.
"We received moisture this year at the most opportune of times," Noel says. "This year would have been a typical year maybe 30 years ago, but now with the 'megafire' seasons that they seem to be termed, we have more structures build in wildland urban interface areas which drive up costs and complexity of what it takes to manage a wildfire. So, those costs go up."
An estimated $200 million firefighting cost overrun is a lot of money, but Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers says it's not enough to force the agency to implement what are called "Fire Transfers." That's where funding for fire suppression is transferred from non-fire programs. Those can include various forest management activities. The Forest Service had to transfer $440 million in 2012 and $505 million last year. The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise says as of September 30th, almost 3.1 million acres had burned this year in the United States; 8.8 million acres had burned during the same time period in 2012.
