US National Interagency Fire Center Wildfire Update as of September 9th

The US National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported that as of Monday, September 9th, 67 large active wildfires are being managed with full suppression strategies nationwide. Current wildfires have burned 2,146,170 acres.

The National Wildfire Preparedness Level has been elevated back to a of 5 out of 5.

23,205 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to incidents, including 24 complex and 5 type 1 incident management teams, 522 crews, 1,306 engines, and 168 helicopters. 245 soldiers from the 14th Brigade Engineer Battalion and the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment based out of Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) are still deployed in support of wildland fire operations on the Boise National Forest. NIMO (Team 2) is assigned to support the military contingent.

NIFC thanked the support staff that traveled from Australia and New Zealand to support US firefighting efforts The last members of these crews completed their assignments and returned home on September 8th.

Daily Statistics

As of Monday, there are 6 large new fires, and in total there are 67 active large wildfires that have burned 2,146,170 acres in 10 states. Oregon has 24 wildfires; Idaho has 20; Montana has 13; California has 8; Washington has 5; Arizona has 4; Wyoming has 3; Nevada has 2; and Alabama and Oklahoma have 1 each. There are 3 fires reported as contained.

The updated year-to-date comparison is as follows:

• Year-to-date through September 9th, 35,757 wildfires were reported, and they have burned 6,865,542 acres.
• During the same period last year, 40,840 wildfires were reported, and they had burned 2,117,411 acres.
• The 10-year average (2014–23) for the same period is 43,149 wildfires and 5,429,112 acres burned.

The NIFC notes that there have been delays in reconciling actual acreage burned with entries into reporting systems—especially from areas with large fires and dynamic fire activity—given the very high tempo and scale of national fire activity over the past few months. Adjustments are occurring as the accuracy of fire locations, mapping, and final fire reporting are reconciled.