U.S. Forest Service Reports 2020 Wildfire Season Set New Record for Acres Burned in National Forests

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is reporting that 2020’s wildfire season saw the largest number of acres burned in national forests since 1910, which was when previous high record was set. As of December 18^th, 2020, 181,234 acres have been reported burned this year in Alaska and 10,069,213 in the other 49 states. In looking at the records from 1985 to 2020 for the lower 49 states, that was the highest total. The largest fire in 2020 was larger than a million acres and qualifying as “gigafire”, was the 1,032,648-acre August Complex in northern California. While “complexes” are comprised of a group of fires, the August Complex originated from numerous lightning-caused blazes which all burned together, merging to become one. In looking at national records since 1985, it burned more acres than all of the fires in the 49 states outside of Alaska in 2006. In its 2020 report on the wildfire season, the USFS noted that the agency’s modeling research on how COVID-19 may spread between firefighters or in communities during response efforts led to new interagency safety protocols to better support fire camp management. The protocols not only successfully minimized the spread of COVID-19 among the agency’s 10,000 firefighters, but early learning suggests the safety measures resulted in additional health benefits to fire crews, reducing ailments common in fire camps, which translated to a healthier and more resilient firefighting workforce available to protect lives, homes, and communities threatened by wildfire.