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Warnings of elevated fire risk <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/11/08/northeast-fire-weather-dry-drought/" target=_blank>have spanned</a> from West Virginia to New England, and outdoor burning is widely banned. One fire has burned <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/11/14/new-york-brush-fires/" target=_blank>thousands of acres across New York and New Jersey</a>, larger than any in more than a decade, and killed at least one person. A blaze torched two acres of parkland before dozens of firefighters could extinguish it — right in the heart of New York City.

Rapidly developing drought across most of the United States in recent days has demonstrated how, given the right conditions, fire can catch and spread anywhere — even in the East. “This is not just a western U.S. problem,” said Yan Feng, an atmospheric and climate scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

The East may not face the same threats of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/08/02/park-fire-prevention-prescribed-burns/" target=_blank>massive wildfires</a> that have become an ominous hallmark of life in the West. Denser development and a more fragmented landscape make it harder for fires to spread through pockets of wildlands and escape into populated areas, experts said. But eastern states nonetheless face growing and underappreciated fire risks for which they are far less prepared than the fire-weary half of the country, researchers said.

Fires have already spread across more of the eastern United States this year than in all of 2023, when 56 percent more acreage burned than in an average year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. This year, the center has reported nearly 11,000 fires across more than 138,000 acres in a region that includes Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic and northeastern states.

Without efforts to better manage fire risks in the East, “we could potentially see more destructive fires in the future,” said Victoria Donovan, an assistant professor of forest management at the University of Florida. “They don’t have to travel nearly as far to interact with human development.”

Here are four reasons researchers say wildfire risks may be underestimated across the East.

While the East’s denser network of development can serve to slow down fires’ spread, it also puts more life and property in their way. Though fires are far more common in western wilderness, those that do ignite close to homes can spread with little warning and at dangerous speed into populated areas.

Take, for example, the December 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder, Colorado, or the Lahaina Fire on the Hawaiian island of Maui last year. In both cases, strong winds quickly blew fires that started on grassland into the heart of urban communities.

Research published last year found that the number of homes destroyed by wildfires has doubled over the past 30 years — both because wildfires are growing larger and communities are sprawling. And it found that most of those homes were near grasslands and shrublands, not forests.

When Jennifer Balch, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, saw that a fire had burned across two acres of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last week, it was yet another example “that completely changed my conception of where we need to worry about fire risk,” she said.

“Vegetation can burn when it’s dry enough to burn” — even in the middle of one of the most densely populated places on the planet, Balch said.

Population density and the growth of communities around wildlands mean more chances for humans to start wildfires — the most common way they’re ignited.

One key 2017 <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1617394114" target=_blank>study</a> found that humans start 84 percent of wildfires, an influence that has tripled the length of the fire season and accounted for nearly half of all area burned across the country.

And there is research to suggest the proportions are even higher in what is known as the wildland-urban interface, or the areas where homes intermingle with flammable forests and other vegetation.

In the East, that interface is “expansive,” Donovan said, with so many pockets of wildlands around and within rural, suburban and even urban communities.

The East can face some of the same weather conditions that drive western megafires, just at different times of year.

In the West, seasonal precipitation patterns have made summer and fall the traditional wildfire season, even as there have been deadly exceptions, including the Marshall Fire. In the East, dry and windy weather is most common in the spring and fall.

While hot summer temperatures raise fire risks in the West, rising average temperatures are also elevating fire risks across the East, even during those relatively cooler seasons, Feng said.

And though drought has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/11/06/droughts-heat-rainfall-future/" target=_blank>primarily been a concern for the West</a> in recent years, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/10/24/us-drought-dry-conditions-east-maps/" target=_blank>rapidly developing drought</a> in the East has demonstrated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/11/08/northeast-fire-weather-dry-drought/" target=_blank>how quickly it can raise fire hazards</a> anywhere. In the U.S. Drought Monitor’s 12-state Northeast region, 58 percent of the land is experiencing at least “moderate” drought, up from 15 percent three months ago.

It is that oscillation from wet to dry that can heighten fire risks, Balch said. Though western climate tends to be more arid, in the East, typically wetter weather can allow vegetation to flourish before drought turns it into fuel for fires.

Meanwhile, strong winds can be the most important factor in how threatening a wildfire becomes.

“Fires don’t have to be very big to be destructive,” Balch said. “What makes them destructive is being fast.”

In the West, fire prevention has become part of life. Residents of wilderness-adjacent communities are well-versed in what sort of landscaping or building materials are least flammable. They participate in community groups organized by Firewise USA, sharing information about how to reduce wildfire risks and what to do if one approaches.

That’s not the case in the East, where it’s not realistic to expect homeowners to invest in the same sorts of fire-resistant retrofits, Balch said.

At the same time, a lack of experience in fire management and fire prediction makes many authorities in eastern states less prepared to handle fast-moving wildfires, Feng said.

“They’re just not as prepared as the West,” where most of the nation’s wildfire-fighting investment is made, Feng said.

But there are signs fire awareness is starting to change.

Heat waves and ice storms have historically been the biggest weather hazards facing the power grid in the East, Feng said. But after power lines sparked devastating fires in Paradise, California, and Lahaina, she said utilities that her lab works with on energy research are paying far more attention to wildfire risks — even in the East.

Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news, 2016

First place for outstanding beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, 2023

University of Maryland at College Park, BA in Journalism

University of Maryland at College Park, Master's of Public Policy

Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun.

Scott Dance

Why wildfires in the eastern U.S. can be more destructive than you may think

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