Sorry, Smokey: Your story doesn’t hold up in these parts

Smokey Bear, beloved bruin though he surely is, doesn’t quite tell the whole truth.

In delivering his stern and iconic “only you can prevent...” slogan over the past few generations, Smokey has strongly implied that if only people would be more careful, then the forests would be spared a fiery fate.

In some parts of the U.S., Smokey’s message is relevant.

Northeastern Oregon isn’t one of those parts.

The fact is, lightning — not you or anybody else — starts the vast majority of wildfires around here.

And neither you, nor anybody else, can do much to prevent lightning.

You can’t do anything, actually.

The latest statistics for the 2010 fire season, compiled by the Blue Mountain Interagency Dispatch Center in La Grande, illustrate the minor role people play in igniting our local wildlands.

Of the 145 fires, 124 were started by lightning.

That’s 86 percent.

It’s also a typical percentage for the region.

Since 1971 there have been 5,900 wildfires on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

Lightning was the combustion culprit in 4,701 of those cases — 79.7 percent.

(The Dispatch Center coordinates firefighting efforts not only on the Wallowa-Whitman, but also for large portions of the Umatilla National Forest, the BLM’s Vale District as well as private lands in Northeastern Oregon and Southeastern Oregon.)

Renae Crippen, who manages the Dispatch Center, attributes the region’s predominance of lightning-caused fires to a couple of factors.

First, few people visit the area compared with, say, national forests much nearer metropolitan areas.

And fewer people equates to fewer cigarette lighters, campfires and other frequent sources of human-caused blazes.

On the Mount Hood National Forest, for instance, parts of which are less than an hour’s drive from Portland, the statistics are pretty nearly reversed from the Wallowa-Whitman’s — people are responsible for about 80 percent of fires on the Mount Hood forest, and lightning 20 percent.

Second, the period when lightning is most common in Northeastern Oregon — July and August — coincides with the hottest, driest part of the year, when the ground is most likely to take a spark.

Lightning alone, though, doesn’t determine the severity of a fire season.

Another component of thunderstorms — rain — plays a significant role, too.

Although the downpours that sometimes accompany lightning don’t always prevent fires, torrential rain, much like a fire hose deployed by a skilled firefighter, can keep blazes small.

The current fire season exemplifies this.

Those 145 fires reported by the Dispatch Center have burned just 216 acres.

In six of the past 10 years, lightning fires on the Wallowa-Whitman alone have scorched at least 10,000 acres.

“This has been a quiet season so far,” Crippen said on Thursday. “The thunderstorms have come in with more moisture than usual. And we had a later start to the season due to the spring rains.”

Rainfall was well above average in Northeastern Oregon in May and June.

The 2010 fire season is on pace to be the most tranquil since 1998.

That year fire crews doused 94 lightning-caused blazes and 21 human-caused fires. All told, those fires burned 202 acres.