'Nothing looks good' preparing for summer wildfire season

Crews across the U.S. West are lighting controlled burns and taking other steps to prepare for the 2021 fire season that follows the worst one on record

SALEM, Ore. -- Wearing soot-smudged, fire-resistant clothing and helmets, several wildland firefighters armed with hoes moved through a stand of ponderosa pines as flames tore through the underbrush. The firefighters weren’t there to extinguish the fire. They had started it. The prescribed burn, ignited this month near the scenic mountain town of Bend, is part of a massive effort in wildlands across the U.S. West to prepare for a fire season that’s expected to be even worse than last year′s record-shattering one. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have thinned by hand, machines and prescribed burns about 1.8 million acres (728,000 hectares) of forest and brushland since last season, officials from the agencies told The Associated Press. They typically treat some 3 million (1.2 million hectares) acres every year.