Climate change causing US wildfire season to last longer, Congress told

Source: The Guardian

Climate change causing US wildfire season to last longer, Congress told

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013 21.12 BST

America's wildfire season lasts two months longer than it did 40 years ago and burns up twice as much land as it did in those earlier days because of the hotter, drier conditions produced by climate change, the country's forest service chief told Congress on Tuesday.

But the forest service was forced to make sharp cuts to fire prevention programmes, and reduce the numbers of fire-fighters and engines because of budget pressures, Thomas Tidwell, the chief of the United States Forest Service, told the Senate committee on energy and natural resources.

"Hotter, drier, a longer fire season, and lot more homes that we have to deal with," Tidwell told the Guardian following his appearance. "We are going to continue to have large wildfires."

Tidwell spoke as authorities began to contain the first big fire of the 2013 season: the Powerhouse fire, which erupted in the rugged hills north of Los Angles, blackening 30,000 acres, destroying six homes, and forcing thousands to flee.

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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/04/climate-change-america-wildfire-season