The 2021 Oregon wildfire season began in May 2021.
More than 1,000 fires had burned at least across the state as of July 21, 2021.
As of August 1, it was expected that the fires might not be contained for months.
The wildfire season in Oregon experienced an early start due to an abnormally dry spring coupled with low snowpack levels amid an
ongoing drought.
The 2021 season has been outpacing the destructive
previous season, with nearly 10 times as many acres have burned as of July 20 compared to the previous year through that date, according to the
NIFC's Northwest Coordination Center.
Background
Oregon has been experiencing increasingly large fire seasons over the last few decades, with the preceding
2020 wildfire season
The 2020 wildfire season involves wildfires on multiple continents.
Below is a partial list of articles on wildfires from around the world in the year 2020.
Asia
* 2020 Uttarakhand forest fires, India
* 2020 Russian wildfires
* 2020 Turkish ...
being one of the most destructive in the state's history.
As with much of the rest of the
Western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau.
As American settlement i ...
, fire officials were predicting another above-average season in 2021 due to expected low precipitation and high temperatures.
The state's declaration of the start of wildfire season in mid-May marked the earliest start to a fire season in the state in over 40 years.
In preparation for the wildfire season, forest officials performed
prescribed burns and state lawmakers worked on wildfire-mitigation legislation designed to create wildfire risk maps, update building codes, and create new rules related to defensible space around homes in the
wildland–urban interface
The wildland–urban interface (WUI) is a zone of transition between wilderness (unoccupied land) and land development, land developed by human impact on the environment, human activity – an area where a built environment meets or intermingles ...
.
List of wildfires
The following is a list of fires that burned more than , or produced significant structural damage or casualties.
Response
At the end of July 2021, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill to invest $220 million in wildfire prevention, preparedness, and response.
See also
*
2021 Western North America heat wave
The 2021 Western North America heat wave was an extreme heat wave that affected much of Western North America from late June through mid-July 2021. The heat wave affected Northern California, Idaho, Western Nevada, Oregon, and Washington in ...
*
List of Oregon wildfires
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oregon, wildfires 2021
Wildfires
A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...
2021
Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...
2021 Oregon wildfires