Presentation highlights risk, solutions to West’s ‘megafires’

Wildfires are getting bigger and hotter across the West, threatening communities and causing billions of dollars in damage as forests become more cluttered and prone to disease. That’s according to a presentation by Paul Hessburg, research landscape ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, documenting how the landscape has changed and what effect humans are having on fire behavior. Hessburg’s talk, titled “Era of Megafires,” is equal parts cautionary tale and call to action, mixing decades worth of research with short video clips to show how and why large fires erupt, the devastation they cause and what people must do to contain them in the future. Hessburg spoke March 1 before a mostly full house at Maxey Hall on the campus of Whitman College in Walla Walla. The community had its own brush with the destructive Blue Creek Fire in July 2015 that burned 6,000 acres, 12 structures and nearly crept into the Mill Creek watershed. While the prospect of megafires is a scary thought, Hessburg said it wasn’t his goal to make people afraid — quite the opposite, actually.