For many of us in the Pacific Northwest, wildfire can feel like something that happens somewhere else…Many of us think of it as something that happens mostly east of the Cascades, deep in a national forest, or far enough away that its first sign is smoke settling into the sky.
But the 2026 fire season has been another reminder that fire is part of life in the Pacific Northwest.
By the end of July, Washington had already seen more than 1,000 fires burn approximately 425,000 acres. This was the most acreage burned in the state by that point in the season since 2021. As of September 10, twelve large fires remained active in Washington, while large fires were also burning throughout Oregon and the broader West.
Western Washington is not separate from the state’s fire story. Forests, grasslands, parks, neighborhoods, and homes increasingly overlap. Wildfire professionals call this the wildland-urban interface: places where human development meets or mixes with vegetation that can burn.
That means understanding fire is not just a rural issue. It is part of understanding where we live.
Fire is not new here
It is tempting to think of wildfire only as a disaster. Fire can certainly be devastating to people, homes and communities, but ecologically, the story is much more complicated.
Fire has shaped Northwest landscapes for thousands of years.
Indigenous peoples throughout the PNW intentionally used fire to manage landscapes; maintaining prairies and open woodlands, encouraging important food plants, improving habitat and creating particular ecological conditions. Robert Boyd’s Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest explores this long history and challenges the idea that forests encountered by European settlers were untouched wilderness. Many were landscapes actively shaped by generations of human stewardship.
Later, American land management moved strongly toward suppressing fire.
One pivotal moment was the Great Fire of 1910, often called the Big Burn. In just 36 hours, fire burned more than three million acres across the Northern Rockies and killed at least 78 firefighters. The disaster deeply influenced the young U.S. Forest Service and helped cement the idea that wildfire was an enemy to be eliminated.
Timothy Egan’s book The Big Burn tells that history, and PBS’s American Experience documentary of the same name is an excellent introduction for anyone who wants to dig deeper.
Today, our understanding is changing again. Scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders, and land managers increasingly recognize that eliminating fire entirely can also alter ecosystems and allow fuels to accumulate. The question is no longer simply, “How do we stop fire?”
It is also, “How do we live responsibly in landscapes where fire occurs?”
What about fire in our neighborhoods?
You don’t need to live in the middle of a forest to think about wildfire.
Wind can carry burning embers well ahead of a fire front. Those embers can collect in gutters, dry leaves, vegetation, wood piles, decks, and other combustible places around a home.
That is why Washington’s Department of Natural Resources encourages residents to create defensible space. This means thoughtfully managing vegetation and other fuels around structures so fire has fewer opportunities to reach or ignite a home.
The first few feet matter enormously.
Washington State University describes the area around a home as the Home Ignition Zone. Immediately next to the structure, the goal is simple: give fire as little as possible to ignite. Moving outward, homeowners can reduce dead vegetation, separate plants, prune potential “fuel ladders,” and maintain healthy vegetation.
Sometimes the fixes are remarkably ordinary:
- Clean leaves and needles from roofs and gutters.
- Move firewood and other combustible materials away from structures.
- Trim branches that touch or hang over buildings.
- Remove dry vegetation immediately next to the house.
- Avoid creating continuous paths of vegetation that could carry fire from the ground into shrubs, trees or structures.
- Think about where patio furniture, mulch and other combustible materials are located during periods of high fire danger.
None of this makes a home fireproof. It makes it harder for fire to find a way in.
A fire-resistant garden can still be a beautiful garden
Defensible space doesn’t mean turning your yard into gravel.
WSU Extension recommends choosing plants partly by their growth characteristics and how readily they burn. Plants with moist, supple leaves, less dead material and open growth habits can be better choices in fire-conscious landscapes. Washington examples can include plants such as mock orange, currants, Oregon grape and Pacific rhododendron, depending on the conditions of the site.
Placement matters just as much as species.
A plant that is relatively fire resistant can still burn. A yard filled with dead leaves, tightly packed vegetation or plants growing directly against a structure can still create a pathway for fire. Fire-resistant landscaping is therefore less about finding a magical list of “safe plants” and more about creating breaks in fuels and maintaining the landscape over time.
Fire, fungi and what happens next
And then there is the part of the fire story we don’t always see. After flames pass through a landscape, ecological processes continue.
Plants resprout. Seeds germinate. Dead wood becomes habitat. Nutrients move through soil. Fungi decompose organic material and form relationships with recovering plants. Animals return and use a landscape differently as vegetation changes. A burned forest is not simply a destroyed forest. It is a landscape undergoing change.
That doesn’t erase the tremendous human cost that severe wildfire can bring. It simply reminds us that ecosystems operate on timelines, and through disturbances, that are often much larger than our own.
Understanding those processes can help us move beyond thinking of fire as either entirely “good” or entirely “bad.” Fire is an ecological force. Our challenge is learning how to build communities that understand it, prepare for it and respond to it wisely.
Explore fire with us
This is exactly what we explored at our Nature Day: Fire, Fungi & Community Builders last weekend.
We looked at what fire does to a landscape, what happens after a fire, the role fungi and other organisms play in recovery, and some practical ways people can make their own homes and neighborhoods more fire resilient.
Because understanding our natural world isn’t only about appreciating the beautiful parts.
Sometimes it means understanding disturbance, change and recovery – and figuring out how we fit into the system.
If you missed last week’s Nature Day, stop by the Visitor Center this month to explore mushrooms and a fire suppression activity!
Want to learn more?
Washington Department of Natural Resources has excellent resources on defensible space and wildfire preparedness, while Washington State University Extension offers detailed guidance on fire-resistant landscaping. For the deeper history of fire in the Northwest, we recommend Robert Boyd’s Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest, Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn, and PBS American Experience: The Big Burn.
Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash