Revisiting the Labor Day Fires of 2020: Were they really unprecedented?

On May 13th, 2021 Dan Donato brought context to 2020s dramatic fire season in which approximately 1.07 million acres were burned in Oregon. Fires on the eastside of the cascades and interior Pacific Northwest are pretty well understood. But on the westside they are much less frequent. Consequently, the drivers of westside fires, their history, their behavior and their ecological impacts are different. This context is critical to understanding local risks and to dispelling the myth that “it can’t happen here”.