Wildfires used to just be a problem in the American West. Not anymore

After training to become a wildland firefighter for a fire crew in the Northeast, Richard Schenk saw his first big blaze in 1988 on the other side of the country, in Yellowstone National Park. In the decades since, fires have regularly taken him across the West, and through forests of Canada, too.

But with more than 200 fires this fall throughout his home state of Connecticut, his teams are on the receiving end of a system that sends firefighters, helicopters and other equipment where they’re needed across the United States and Canada. During what has been a historically active fire season in the East, Connecticut has pulled crews from as close as Rhode Island, Maine and Quebec and as far as Idaho, Oregon and California.

“This is new for us,” said Schenk, a Connecticut fire control officer.

Though the western United States faces the greatest risks of expanding and intensifying fires, the unusual and long-lasting spate of eastern blazes underscores the ways growing wildfire risks across the country may stretch resources and surprise even the most seasoned firefighters. The West has for years been adapting to more extreme fires and investing in firefighting resources, but in a place like Connecticut, there hasn’t been a reason to consider such steps – until now.

As average temperatures rise and warmer air sucks more moisture out of landscapes, firefighters across the country say they are more frequently battling blazes at unexpected times of year, and in more places.

“This adds to the costs of managing extreme weather events,” said Katie Dykes, commissioner of the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

And it’s not just fires. A matter of weeks before some fires began burning, historic flooding hit some of the same parts of Connecticut in mid-August, she said. That burst of rain – which, based on historical data, can be expected about once a millennium – could not prevent more than 95% of the state entering what is now classified as severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“We’ve seen all kinds of unprecedented impacts in our state and will continue to,” Dykes said.

Across the Northeast, drought has developed rapidly over the past month, after record-breaking stretches without any precipitation across the region. It prompted New York City last week to issue a drought warning that could be a precursor to water use restrictions. The city also established its first brush fire task force, whose members will use drones to detect fire risks and investigate blazes.

About 61% of the Northeast was in at least “moderate” drought as of Tuesday, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s most recent analysis. Drought has persisted despite a recent stretch of rainy and snowy weather for the East, with several more inches of widespread rainfall needed to alleviate the drought.

The conditions have fueled hundreds of fires, including some that are the region’s largest in decades. The Jennings Creek Fire along the border of New York and New Jersey has spread across more than 5,300 acres since igniting Nov. 8 and was still not fully contained as of Wednesday. In southwestern Massachusetts, the footprint of the Butternut Fire had surpassed 1,300 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, and as of Wednesday, it was still not fully contained.

And though wildfires in the West can grow significantly larger, experts stressed that even small fires can be dangerous in such a densely populated part of the country. In the East, there tend to be more people around who can detect fires faster, in part because of a landscape fragmented with development. But that also means there is more human activity around pockets of wilderness that can spark fires, and more structures can stand in their way.

Just as fires have been taking residents of the West by surprise with their speed and intensity, there are signs that fire trends may be changing in the East, said Thomas Brady, executive director of the Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact. The group was founded in 1947, when similarly dry conditions allowed fire to spread across more than 200,000 acres of Maine, and it helps states and Canadian provinces to coordinate and share firefighting resources.

Intense fires have become more frequent in the East, he said, and this is a second consecutive year the Northeastern compact is dealing with unusually high fire activity on its own turf. In what was a historic 2023 wildfire season across Canada, large fires hit Nova Scotia and Quebec, drawing in firefighters from across the United States, including from Connecticut.

This year, it’s the northeastern United States that is importing firefighting resources, and not just from within the compact, Brady said. Connecticut’s Hawthorne Fire, which grew to about 130 acres before being contained, even required the help of a Hotshot crew – one that is highly trained and specialized for on-the-ground firefighting – from California.

“That’s definitely a newer thing for us,” Brady said. It has been a “jolt” to states not used to being ground zero for fires, he said.

Some of the states are not used to managing the costs of fighting those fires.

In Connecticut, where nearly 60 fires remained active or under monitoring last week, firefighting costs are expected to end up in the millions of dollars, though a precise accounting hasn’t happened, Dykes said.

Whether this season means the state invests in more of its own firefighting resources, or otherwise changes how it prepares, is an open question that officials will consider once the dangers have passed, she said.

While the state got the help it needed, such as a helicopter from Maine to carry water, in some cases the crews it brought in were among only a handful in the country available, said Christopher Martin, director of the forestry division in the state’s environmental protection department.

As the dangers have persisted, there has been a push to better educate residents on fire safety.

The state’s density means fire spread has been “going both ways,” in some cases spreading from forests to destroy barns, sheds and homes, and in others, originating as house fires, said Thomas Trask, Connecticut’s forest protection supervisor.

Preventive measures haven’t yet gone as far in the East as they have in communities in the West – where there is a heavy emphasis on clearing a vegetation-free buffer around homes and using nonflammable building materials.

Still, firefighters have been urging residents to move wood piles away from their homes or clear leaves from underneath decks, Trask said.

While a respite from dangerous fire weather has arrived with cooler and wetter conditions over the past week, it’s too early to know if fire activity will die down for the winter, Dykes added.

That will require repeated bouts of rain and snow to prevent fall leaves and other vegetation from quickly drying out again, officials said.

“We’re not out of it yet,” Dykes said.