Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove said at the agency’s annual end-of-wildfire season news conference that about 40% of the fires this season were in the western part of the state. He called the Bear Gulch Fire the “largest fire in Western Washington that we’ve seen in a generation.”
“The impacts of these fires, the impacts of smoke on population centers and their contributions to asthma and public health concerns, are something that people throughout Washington need to care about,” Upthegrove said.
Upthegrove’s prognosis comes on the heels of a fire season that he described as being typical. Some 1,851 fires started in the state, burning 251,840 acres this year, he said.
Washington state Forester George Geissler noted a common refrain: “Thank goodness for rain.” But there are still some fires remaining on the landscape, he said — mostly on federal lands — that are in the process of being addressed.
Upthegrove said firefighters kept 94% of the blazes on DNR lands at less than 10 acres. The vast majority of this season’s fires could have been prevented. Some 90% of them, or about 1,600, were human-caused.
Four large, costly fires in Mason County sparked up this season: the Bear Gulch, Hamma, Browns Creek and Toonerville fires, said KC Whitehouse, battalion chief with Central Mason County Fire-EMS. Homes were threatened, tourism dollars took a hit and commercial timber was lost — not to mention any associated long-term environmental impacts.
In 2021, House Bill 1168 established legislative intent to direct $500 million over eight years to Washington wildfire prevention, preparedness and protection. But Upthegrove pointed out that this fire season coincided with the state Legislature having slashed wildfire prevention-response funding in half: down to some $60 million for the current biennium.
“And if that funding isn’t restored, we’re going to see more fires, bigger fires, and more cost to taxpayers — more risk to property, to life, more damage to our environment,” he said.
State Rep. Larry Springer , a Kirkland Democrat, sponsored HB 1168. He and Upthegrove said that they’d push lawmakers next session to restore funding for the effort — some of which they hoped would come from Washington’s cap-and-trade program, the Climate Commitment Act, amid a large general fund shortfall.
“You can’t work on forest health one year and not the next,” said Springer, who’s the deputy majority leader of the state House. “It does not work that way.”
About $20 million of the $60 million for wildfire preparedness in the current budget comes from CCA money, Geissler said. That marked the first time such funds went to support HB 1168 programs.
Money is tight for the state, Upthegrove acknowledged.
“But putting out wildfires is a core basic function of government that saves lives and protects property, and saves us money in the long run,” he said.
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