Fire Season Comes to an End and Officials Say it Was Relatively Quiet

While this may not be a surprise to anyone who has seen the rain the past few days, fire season in Oregon has officially come to an end. State officials declared it over on Friday.

The good news is that while the state did have to suppress 807 fires that burned 5,554 acres, costing about $17.4 million, officials say it wasn't nearly as it had been in recent years.

In the three years previous, the state saw an average of 81,467 acres burned costing an average of $88 million in suppression costs.

"Overall, we are pleased with the outcome of the 2016 fire season," said ODF Fire Protection Deputy Chief Ron Graham. "Thanks to aggressive and safe firefighting, we were able to keep several fires with great potential small in scale while keeping firefighter injuries to a minimum.

"We are thankful for our partners within Oregon's complete and coordinated fire protection system, including forest landowners, rural fire districts, and federal and state partners that played key roles throughout the fire season."

State officials say that while there was some good news, there was also bad news - the number of human-caused fires were up significantly. Ninety percent of the fires were human-caused, a 25 percent increase over the average.

"Fire prevention remains our top priority," said Graham. "Human-caused fires, especially debris burning and illegal, abandoned campfires continue to raise concern. We are constantly looking for new ways to raise awareness to reduce these unnecessary and careless fires."

Photo courtesy Oregon Department of Forestry