- Number of firefighters who fought the Angora fire: 2,174
- Total suppression cost: $12,100,000
- Number of firefighters who fought the 2000 Skalkaho Fire in Bitterroot National Forest in an area ‘interspersed with homes’: 755
- Cost of firefighting operations: $7,200,000
- Number of firefighters who battled an unnamed fire in an uninhabited portion of the nearby Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in the same year: 25
- Total suppression cost: $709,999
- Acres burned in the unnamed fire: 63,000
- Acres burned in the Skalkaho Fire: 64,000
- Acres burned in Angora fire: 3,100
- Percentage of federal hazardous fuel reduction funds allocated to the wildland urban interface (WUI) between 2001 and 2004: 65
- Estimated size of the U.S. Forest Service 2008 budget currently under discussion in Congress: $4.55 billion
- Percentage of the budget expected to be allocated to fire fighting and hazardous fuel reduction: 44
- Percentage of budget allocated to same services in 2000: 25
- Percentage by which funding for other U.S. Forest Service programs is expected to diminish between 2000 and 2008: 13
- Approximate combined budget of the 18 National Forests within California in 2006:
- $550 million
- Percentage of that budget devoted to fire fighting and hazardous fuels reduction: 50
- Number of acres of present-day federal lands that burned every year prior to European settlement: 25,000,000
- Acres of federal land burned in 2006: 9,873,745
- Number of years in U.S. history when more acres have burned: 0
- Total amount spent by the U.S. Forest Service to fight fires in 2006: $1.5 billion
- Number of acres of federal land burned in 2000, then dubbed, ‘the fire year of the century’: 7,400,000
- Number of years between 2001 and 2005 when more acres of federal land burned: 2
- Number of acres burned in the U.S. this year so far (through August 3): 5,213,838
- Ten-year average of acres burned during the same months: 3,697,590
- Minimum acres of federal land in need of hazardous fuel reduction treatments in 2006: 180,000,000
- Total acres of hazardous fuel reduction completed on federal lands from 2001 to 2006: 19,600,000
- Annual acres burned in Tahoe Basin prior to European settlement: 2,000 to 8,000
- Total acres burned in Tahoe Basin since 1850: 5,484
- Estimated acres in need of hazardous fuel reduction treatment in the Lake Tahoe Basin in the next 8 years: 67,241
- Acres of Basin forests that have undergone fuel reduction treatment since the year 2000: 13,000
- Acres of fuel reduction treatment planned for the Tahoe Basin over the next 8 years: 38,000
- Maximum cost of thinning and burning one acre of National Forest in the Tahoe Basin: $2,500
- Maximum cost of similar treatment in the Sierra Nevada: $1,000
- Minimum cost of thinning and burning one acre of National Forest in the Tahoe Basin: $1,000
- Minimum cost of similar treatment in the Sierra Nevada: $500
- Average cost of fighting one acre of the Angora fire: $4,000
- Projected annual fuel reduction budget in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit in years to come: $10 million
- Acres of hazardous fuel reduction treatments completed in Tahoe National Forest in 2006: 3,553
- Combined cost of hazardous fuel reduction and other forest restoration activities in Tahoe National Forest in 2006:
- $5 million
- Acres in Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit: 165,000
- Number of acres in Tahoe National Forest: 1,207,000
~ compiled by Terray Sylvester
Author
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