The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
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If you mention wildfires, a lot of Americans will think of the western United States, areas like Southern California. But fire is becoming a bigger problem in the southeast as well. I've definitely responded to more fires each year, it seems like. I think that everyone who is in professional firefighting in this region has noticed an increase. That's Zach O'Donnell. He's the coordinator for the Southern Blue Ridge Prescribed Burn Association, based in western North Carolina.

And this week, the State Forest Service declared one of the fires burning there as the highest priority fire in the U.S. I've seen fire, flame lengths higher than I've ever seen this year as well. Climbing through the rhododendron, 30, 40 foot flames, which for this region is pretty rare. O'Donnell would rather not be helping fight active fires. Usually he's educating landowners about fire prevention and leading controlled burns to reduce the risk of bigger fires.

And right now, risk is high. Six months ago, Hurricane Helene ravaged mountainous forested areas like in Asheville, North Carolina. All those downed trees, combined with a dry spring and high winds, it creates dangerous wildfire conditions. Just the amount of debris down in the forest has made it extremely challenging.

Jeremy Knighton is assistant fire chief in Asheville. He explained there are multiple wildfires burning across thousands of acres and

in a region which, again, six months ago saw those devastating floods. You know, the communities around us have suffered tremendous loss already. And now these fires on top of that, and we know we've lost structures, you know, in these surrounding counties. And we're just...

really on edge. A catastrophic hurricane, a dry spell, and a windy spring helped create the current wildfire risk in the mountains of North and South Carolina. But studies show that climate change could increase the intensity of wildfires in southern Appalachia, and a growing population could increase the danger to humans.

And people like Jeremy Knighton stress that the region will need to be ready for that. One ounce of preparedness is better than, you know, 100 pounds of cure in a lot of times. Really that whole community approach. We're not going to be able to do this by ourselves. Consider this. Wildfires are growing more common in southern Appalachia. How will the region adapt to the future? Coming up, we will hear the answer to that from a landscape ecologist and fire expert. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim. Visit Schwab.com to learn more. It's Consider This from NPR. Wildfires are not new to the Carolinas, but the severity and frequency of those places, that is concerning to experts.

For the past 25 years, Rob Scheller has studied fires. He is a professor of landscape ecology at North Carolina State University. I asked him what is the best way to describe what's going on right now in the southeast. The fire risk is elevated and it is severe. We do need to be taking precautions. This is a combination, of course, of dry spring, which is not unusual for the area, but it is a dry spring in combination with

elevated fuel loads over a wide area due to Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Helene damaged over 800,000 acres of forest. And so just think about a lot of tree mortality, limbs falling and so on. And so that all lands on a forest floor.

And once it gets dried out, this is fantastic fuel for fire. Is it fair to say then that the massive population growth that you've seen throughout so much of the southeast is a big factor here? I mean, I think one example, Greenville, South Carolina, this is one of the communities near one of these fires, gained something like six new households.

every week between 2000 and 2020. This is just massive population growth in this region. How does that affect all of this? Yeah, the expansion of the wildland-urban interface is a huge factor when we think about fire risk. And it is expanding rapidly across the Southeast. And so more people, there's more opportunities for fires to negatively impact, of course, homes and lives. It's also more opportunities for people to accidentally start fires

And so that's more people living near natural vegetation, having barbecues, maybe doing some burning of yard waste and so on. So it's a two-way risk of two people and people starting fires as well.

What is the best way to frame it from your perspective on the question I'm sure you've gotten a lot of, has climate change made this risk worse? Climate change has made the risk worse. And part of that is just rising temperatures by themselves are

will allow fuels to dry out faster. The other factor is what we're seeing in the southeast is precipitation has become much more variable over time. And so last year is a great example where we had a really wet spring followed by a dry summer and then a wet early fall and then a really dry later fall.

And so that means that you have these flash droughts sprinkled throughout the season, which, again, allow fuels to dry out and increases fire risk. So obviously, temperatures are going up. That's not changing anytime soon. No. More people are moving to the southeast.

That doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Correct. What to you are the biggest steps that can be taken to try and mitigate these risks? Again, there's many sides to the risk story. So one thing you want to do is just reduce the risk of fire spreading. And that requires reducing the amount of fuels on the ground. That means getting out there and

doing some salvage logging, maybe doing some prescribed burning. However, that's going to be difficult to cross over 800,000 acres of rough terrain. And so people also need to be reducing their own risk. And in that case, there's things you can do around vegetation management immediately around your house, making sure the vegetation is away from the house, making sure you don't have a wood pile near to or up against the house, trying to eliminate any wooden fences,

People could also change the way they build new houses. So there's many more fireproof methods of building houses today. And lastly, people just need to be aware of the potential for fire and think about evacuation routes, what they need to grab right away. You don't want to be waiting until the last minute to figure out where the prized family photo album is or the deed to the house, etc. You should have all those things ready to go in the case of a fire because those delays cause mortality.

Yeah. That is Professor Rob Scheller of North Carolina State University. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan with audio engineering from Josephine Neonai and Tiffany Vera Castro. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Wadunan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

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