Franz is an excellent public servant. I can't argue with anything she recommends.

However, this article is full of hyperbole, that needs to be put into perspective. The state controls about 12% of the forests here, the federal government controls about 43%. So this could be a really bad year for the (state controlled) DNR lands (that Frans manages) but just an average year in general. The number of fires in the state is irrelevant -- what matters is the amount of area that burns. Even that can be misleading. Grasslands burn all the time. They do so quickly, and don't produce much smoke.

In any event, if you look at the total amount of land burned in the state, last year was bad, but not as bad as 2015. 2019 was below average, and so on.Things are not getting worse every year, as you wrote.

You can see these numbers (as gathered by National Interagency Fire Center) on the bottom of the Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_wildfires. As of right now, fire forest fire acreage in Washington State looks to be big, but won't necessarily break the record. As of today (again, according to NIFC) it is about 300,000 acres. That is big, and could get much bigger. But given the current weather, it probably won't. Time will tell, and rather than printing stories that lack perspective, you would be better off waiting.

The same goes for early season "It is dry -- the fires are going to terrible!" stories, that are often wrong. We could do a much better job of managing our forests, but spreading bullshit doesn't help.

California, however, is a different story, as is southern Oregon, and British Columbia. In general this hasn't been a particularly bad year for fires in the state, but it has been really bad in the areas surrounding us. It has been damn inconvenient (shutting off the North Cascades Highway) but if you look at all of the fires burning in the state, none of them are very big.

27 miles (milepost 144 through milepost 171, area stretching from Silver Star Gate to Early Winters Campground) of Western Washington forest land has been burned by wildfire----the Algonian Fire in the North Cascades (SR20), nine miles west of Winthrop. That is truly horrible.
In all my 57 years as a Washington State native, this is also the driest summer that I can recollect on record. The unseasonable heat wave we had in late June did not make a good combination.
My ongoing questions for Susan Pritchard, with her knowledge and experience with controlled burns: How do we conduct such recommended controlled burns during so particularly dry a summer, with wildfires at high risk of spreading? The ever-changing direction of the wind can spread wildfires. How are controlled burns contained?

@3 my understanding is that controlled burns should happen in the "off" season, but that means a year round budget and year round work for fire crews (or at least significant extensions to both), which the federal government especially may not be ready to commit to with coffers and workers drained from some intense fire seasons, and even the state has to significantly reorganize to make it happen.

Does the plan involve not building in or near forests and dry areas?

Cause that works.

That and making a policy not to "save" residential buildings in public lands, even if it's leased.

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@3: "My ongoing questions for Susan Pritchard, with her knowledge and experience with controlled burns: How do we conduct such recommended controlled burns during so particularly dry a summer, with wildfires at high risk of spreading?"

Why do you keep imagining she advocated for controlled burns during the height of wildfire season? Can you point to anything in her article which would state, or even imply, she was so advocating? (She even said we could allow for burns to continue at the end of the season, when the imminent rains and snows would extinguish them, but nothing about controlled burns during the season.)

It's beginning to appear you simply didn't like her message, but you can't find a reason to oppose it, so you keep asking the same irrelevant question over and over again.

@8: "Why do you keep on senselessly concern trolling me when I have a legitimate question?"

I'm asking you for the basis of the legitimacy of that question, and you haven't answered. You're the one who keeps concern-trolling a scientist, whom you'd already groundlessly accused of being a flack for timber interests.

Now, try harder this time: Why do you keep imagining she advocated for controlled burns during the height of wildfire season? Can you point to anything in her article which would state, or even imply, she was so advocating?