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A burned trailer sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mike Stewart\/AP<\/p>\n
A helicopter carries water to the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mike Stewart\/AP<\/p>\n
A burned vehicle sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mike Stewart\/AP<\/p>\n
A fire burns as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mike Stewart\/AP<\/p>\n
A firefighter works the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mike Stewart\/AP<\/p>\n
Often considered more a problem for Western North America, wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and damaging in the East, such as this week’s blaze that destroyed more than 50 homes in Georgia, fire scientists said.<\/p>\n
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Researchers blame a number of factors including climate change causing fuel to dry out and be more flammable, a record drought, tens of millions of tons of dead trees from Hurricane Helene and just the large area where dense forests and high numbers of people try to coexist.<\/p>\n
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So far this year, 2,802 square miles<\/a> (7,258 square kilometers) of the United States has burned in wildfires \u2014 much of it in Nebraska, an unusual area for massive wildfires \u2014 that’s 88% more than the 10-year average for this time of year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s happening as significant chunks of the country set records for the warmest winter and March and April drought.<\/p>\n \u201cThe warmer we get, the more fire we see. Longer fire seasons, more lightning possibly, and drier fuels,\u201d said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada. \u201cI think we’re going to see more fire in the East. We’re seeing more intense fires.\u201d<\/p>\n Fires are increasing in the East<\/p>\n The number of large fires, likelihood of them happening and amount of land burned has increased in most of the Southeast United States from 1984 to 2020, according to a 2023 study<\/a> by University of Florida fire ecologists Victoria Donovan and Carissa Wonkka.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe fires in the East historically and today are a lot smaller than in the Western United States, so they might not always grab as much attention as those out West. But we\u2019re starting to see now this shift in dynamics in the East, we\u2019re starting to quantify it,\u201d Donovan said Thursday. \u201cEven though the changes that we’re seeing in the East are much smaller than we’re quantifying out West, we think it’s extremely important to start to get ahead of this problem now.\u201d<\/p>\n Three months ago, Donovan, Wonkka and other fire scientists created a new network for fire researchers to study Eastern fires because some of the issues that experts have learned out West may not apply in the East, Wonkka said.<\/p>\n Even though the West has bigger and more noticeable fast-spreading fires, the East has more people in the way of flames in something scientists call the wildland-urban interface or WUI.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that 45% of all large wildfires in the East burn some portion of the wildland-urban interface and 55% of the area burned so that a lot of these large wildfires are associated with WUI fires,\u201d Donovan said.<\/p>\n Add to that the forests in the East are denser and less likely to be thinned out than those in the West, Donovan said.<\/p>\n Hurricane Helene created a \u2018ticking time bomb\u2019<\/p>\n A week ago, federal and state official looked at the drought, the weather and the millions of dead trees from Hurricane Helene in 2024 and issued an advisory to watch out for fires, said Nick Nauslar, a National Weather Service fire science and operations officer at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThey are thinking, you know, they could see more fires, more resistance to control with the fires that they get,\u201d Nauslar said. \u201cIt has been warmer and drier than normal across many of the areas where Helene caused damage. So there\u2019s the potential there. You have an excess of fuel available because now (the trees are) dead and at the mercy of weather and climate. And then if you get dry and windy conditions, if you get an ignition, it\u2019s more likely to ignite and spread.\u201d<\/p>\n In Georgia alone, 13,954 square miles (36,142 square kilometers) of forest land was hit by Hurricane Helene, downing more than 26 million tons of pine and 30 million tons of hardwood, according a November 2024 University of Georgia and Georgia Forestry Commission timber damage assessment.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of us have worried about fuel buildup post-Helene. It\u2019s a ticking time bomb,\u201d University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd said.<\/p>\n Dry air makes it worse<\/p>\n But it’s not just downed trees \u2014 it’s also dry air increasing the likelihood of fires. It’s not just a lack of rain, but the air itself is less humid, which causes problem, Nauslar and Flannigan said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cAs we warm \u2026 the atmosphere\u2019s ability to suck moisture out of dead fuel, not live fuel, but dead fuel, increases almost exponentially as temperature increases,\u201d Flannigan said. \u201cThe drier the fuel, the easier it is for a fire to start, means more fuel dried and is available to burn, which leads to higher intensity fires that are difficult to impossible to extinguish.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s what we’re seeing now starting to make inroads into the East,\u201d Flannigan said. Human-caused climate change is clearly playing a role, he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A burned trailer sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98850,16616,1924,23681,59373,86691,87641,97657,98852,59371,61262,82,84,83,464,98851,98849],"class_list":["post-264039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-carissa-wonkka","tag-georgia","tag-nebraska","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30039-ap-florida-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30041-ap-georgia-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30045-ap-idaho-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30073-ap-nebraska-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-united-states","tag-victoria-donovan","tag-wildfire-georgia-east-west-climate-change-helene"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}