About 90% of Nebraska wildfires are caused by humans. Burn piles are a common culprit

100,000 acres of land burned by wildfires is typically the marker of a bad fire year in Nebraska. So far this year, 30,000 acres have burned, and it's only mid-March. After a stretch of warm, windy and even record-breaking weather, Nebraska Public Media’s Jackie Ourada asked State Forester John Erixson about Nebraska’s fire outlook for 2025 and how Nebraskans can prevent more fires.

John Erixson: I think we're set up to have a big fire season, and the weather plays such an important role in that as we go into summertime. With a soil moisture deficit, our trees are drier than normal, and as we go into to springtime, we have a fair amount of really dry, cured out grasses that are out there, that we would call fine fuels, those are very receptive to to wildfires or spark that turns into a wildfire.

Ourada: I didn't realize 90% of wildfires in Nebraska are human-caused, and that's 10% higher than the national average?

Erixson: It's close to that. So we usually figure about 93% you know, it goes up and down a little bit by year, and the national average is anywhere from 83 to 85% of fires are human-caused. So we're we're above it by 10% anyway.

Ourada: Why is that?

Erixson: I think it's an awareness thing. We need to go back and talk about wildfires and what the causes of wildfires are. In Nebraska, 35% of our wildfires are caused by some sort of debris burning. Those hold heat, or they get away on a windy day, and then we have a fire. So if we could cut that in half, it would make a significant difference for us on the number of fires.

Ourada: I imagine this is a difficult needle to thread. If a landowner is told, "You can't burn today. Actually you probably shouldn't burn all week," How do you balance the need to clear debris with the need to protect the land?

Erixson: I think that's a difficult thing to balance for people. Producers, landowners...They're the stewards of the land. They know their property, they love their property, and they're as connected to that property as anyone. And they know that this pile needs to go away. They're obviously looking for opportunities to do that when they feel like it's safe enough to do so. The challenge really is, how do you balance that, between the risk and the liability associated with that too? You know, the suppression costs on fires can be thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars very quickly. And you have to balance the risk and the reward, I guess, is the way I would approach it.

Ourada: Speaking with Nebraska state forester John Erickson on Nebraska Public Media. Knowing that pile burns are the number one cause of wildfires in Nebraska, how do you safely go about managing them? Of course, after acquiring a burn permit and such.

Erixson: Yeah, I would start with before you light the match, you know, look at the weather. Look at the forecast over the next 72 hours. [Are] the winds going to be over 20 miles an hour? Or the humidity going to be under 20%? Start there, but once you do burn, don't assume the fire is out. Go back days and even weeks, depending on what happens with the weather. If we get two inches of rain after you burn your pile, the chances of having holdover heat is are much reduced. But when was the last time we had two inches of rain, right? So please just go back and check those fires. Make sure they're cold out. If something gets started, call somebody immediately and get some help there.

Ourada: Before we let you go. I want to bring up this chart that you brought in that shows the number of acres burned in Nebraska per year, going back to 1964 we see peaks every so often at the beginning of the chart, but once you get to 2020, 2022, 2024, it looks like it's remaining consistently high. Can you tell us about what we're seeing now and how that compares?

Erixson: Obviously, there's great concern in around what that trend is looking like. Weather and wind and all of that has a lot to do with those fire seasons. I don't think people necessarily realize how quickly a fire can start and spread outside of containment. Whether it's me driving a vehicle down the highway and I have a chain dragging and sparks are flying off my chain. Parking my vehicle on dry grass when it's dry and windy can lead to wildfires. UTVs can do it. Some of the shooting sports can lead to wildfires, as well. So there's lots of opportunities for a wildfire to get started, and if we can do something that helps reduce that number, even by 10%, it would make a huge difference in our state.

Below: Read the letter on risks of pile burning recently published by the Nebraska Forest Service, Nebraska Farm Bureau and Nebraska Cattlemen.

Nebraska Forest Service Nebraska Farm Bureau Nebraska Cattlemen Op-Ed.pdf