As fires rampage throughout the West, the National Interagency Fire Center has elevated the National Wildfire Preparedness Level to 5, the highest it can be.
It’s the earliest in the fire season that the country has reached that level in a decade.
More than 1 million acres have burned across the country this year. There are currently 17,000 firefighters and support personnel battling active fires across the West.
The PL5 designation is mostly symbolic, but it’s a reflection of how many firefighters across the country are being utilized on the ground.
Stanton Floria, the spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center, said PL5 means at least 80 percent of wildland fire resources have been sent to fires.
With fires burning in multiple regions of the country there’s already a potential for an exhaustion of firefighting resources.
And it’s not just California that’s struggling. "The northern Rockies in particular really have had a large fire outbreak over the last few days," said Floria. "The Northwest, in particular Oregon, is also experiencing a high level of fire activity."
Meanwhile, CAL FIRE has new help from the skies in the form of fixed-wing aircraft as well as military-style fire hawk helicopters.
"It has a 1,000-gallon capacity tank, which is approximately three times greater than the bucket that the Super Huey previously carried," said CAL FIRE Battalion Chief Jake Hannan. A Super Huey is another type of helicopter used to battle wildfires.
Despite the current wildfire toll, Hannan said CAL FIRE has so far met its goal of containing 95 percent of fires at less than 10 acres.
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