Interested in finding out which are the states with the most forest fires and why? Do you know how do those wildfires get started in the first place, what causes them the most? Unfortunately, people are dominantly responsible for the most forest fires. Since we are talking about wildfires, the most frequent cause of them is an unattended campfire. One of the first and the most important lessons for every scout, mountaineer, and other outdoor enthusiast should be about attending and putting out the campfire. We are pretty sure that trained mountaineers and scouts are not mainly responsible for the forest fires, but on the contrary the ones we can put the blame on are just people who haven’t had training of any kind. Every true mountaineer has a lot more awareness about campfire safety and behaving in the wilderness generally. Those who went for a picnic or to have the fun in the nature for the first time and have no “behaving in the nature” experience, are more likely to be the cause of the forest fire. Although 4 out of 5 wildfires are ignited by people and not by the lightning, environmental conditions are mostly responsible for spreading the flames. So, why some states have more forest fires than others? Because of more acres of forests, or because of people’s unawareness of campfire safety? Most likely because of both factors. If you are interested in finding out which are the states with the most forests, to compare them with the states with the most forest fires and to see if there is a connection, check out our list of 10 most forested states in the US. Also don’t forget to check out our article about the 10 most beautiful states in the US.
What is interesting the most is that the large number of fires doesn’t necessarily mean more burned acres. Sometimes only a few wildfires can spread to cause considerable damage. In this case, less can be more. So, how do we rank the states with the most forest fires? By the number of fires per year or by the amount of acres burned? Our methodology or ranking will be based on the number of the forest fires by state, and not by the damage they caused. We’ve collected data from 2014 National Interagency Fire Center.
Before we proceed with our list of states that have most wildfires, let see some other relevant information about the forest fires in the US. Did you know that 63,212 wildfires burned over about 3, 6 million acres in one year (2014)? This sounds like a lot of damage, and this is one of the years with lowest number of fires in the US. Almost every year, on average more than 100,000 forest fires destroy 4-5 million acres of land. And 90% of those fires were caused by humans. Are we that negligent or just unaware of the risks? One thing is for sure – it is of the most importance to educate the people about fire safety, in order to prevent further destruction of our greatest treasure – forests.
Now, let see which are those 10 states with the most forest fires in 2014:
10. Washington
Number of fires: 1,480
