The wildfire season still has a month or so to go and the Forest Service says that it is running out of money for fire suppression. Having already spent about a billion dollars, it is “diverting $600 million from timber, recreation and other areas to fill the gap.”
So far, about 3.4 million acres have burned, which isn’t a lot by recent standards. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than 8 million acres burned in every year from 2004 through 2007, as well as 2011 and 2012. Yet the Forest Service spent less than $1 billion on fire suppression in 2005 and just over a billion in 2004.
