This summer, let’s ditch the camp fire

Wildfires this summer are stretching government resources to their limits. (Uriah Walker/U.S. Army photo)

Nobody loves a good camp fire more than me. I can stare into the flames and enjoy that mellow nighttime vibe for hours.

But if I’m camping anywhere west of the High Plains, I’m not making one. And neither should anyone else this summer.

As of this writing, there are scores of large, active fires burning in the United States, and all but a few are in western states. Arizona has closed four national forests to visitors as massive wildfires there spread. Large fires are popping up in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Montana, as well as in British Columbia. And given the lousy snowpack much of the West received this winter and spring, there’s a good chance fire conditions are going to worsen.

The western drought is so severe that lake levels at massive reservoirs such as Lake Mead are near record lows. That’s a sign that this drought isn’t just one season in the making. It’s been an ongoing trauma to ecosystems in much of the western half of the continent.

Topping it off is the widespread tree die-off from bark beetle infestations. The mountain pine beetle has killed about 100,000 square miles of forest in the North American west over the past 20 years, leaving behind huge swaths of dead trees from New Mexico to British Columbia – ready fuel to turn the smallest fire into an inferno.

I could go into the whole fire etiquette thing – keep the fire in a fire ring, make sure it’s out and cold before leaving it, etc. – but we’re past that now. Any open fire sheds embers and sparks, and as we’ve seen, it doesn’t take much heat to get a fire going. Carelessness with camp fires often leads to disaster, but given the conditions right now, even if you do everything right, you could still set off a wildfire.

Some would argue that natural events, such as lightning, are a bigger cause of wildfires than people, but this is a myth. In the U.S., almost 85 percent of all wildland fires are caused by humans.

These wildfires can – and do – cause real harm to people. Property damage from wildfires runs into the billions of dollars, and as we saw with the 2018 Paradise fire in California, the effects turned deadly. Eighty-five people were killed in that fast-moving, fast growing fire that razed a town.

A calming camp fire is a time-honored tradition, and we all like cooking over a fire. But you can use a camp stove to cook, and find other ways to make that camp experience more relaxing. This summer, we need to do our part and not light those fires.

Bob Doucette