FIRE STATISTICS

This data and the accompanying chart was made in 2002 using 80 years of wildfire history from the National Interagency Fire Center and contained on NIFC's web page. However, NIFC has since discontinued to display fire frequency data except for recent 10 year averages. The 10 year average gives just a small glimpse of history, leading to misleading conclusions and historical comparative analysis. As this graph demonstrates, recent fire years are well below historical highs. Data from 1919-1999 shows and average of 14.1 million acres burned per year for that 80 year period. Since 2000, an average of 5.5 million acres burned.

1919 THROUGH 1999 AVERAGE: THE 80 YEAR AVERAGE
AVERAGE ACRES BURNED: 14,141,620 acres
AVERAGE NUMBER OF FIRES: 137,174 fires

The number of acres burned as of 10-31-2002 is 6,700,000
which is 47%, or just lesss than half of the average acres burned over the last 80 years.

View a chart of the above statistics click here

DATA SOURCE: THE NATIONAL INTERAGENCY FIRE CENTER.