Dozens of other fires broke out in Georgia and the west of North Carolina, both of which were hit hard by Hurricane Helene. In some areas, fallen trees may act as fuel and promote fire distribution in the short and long term, according to Virginia Iglesias, who study the effects of climate variability on social environmental systems at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“After the hurricane, there were many dead trees on the ground, and it made sunlight reach the ground,” Iglesias said. ‘And with that, it is easier for biomass to make fire when there is an inflammation.

This happened last week in Polk County in North Carolina, where firefighters struggled to navigate trees between fallen trees and contain a nearly 500-acre fire in the area, reports Blue Ridge Public Radio. These fallen trees can be a fire wash for years after a hurricane, especially in the southeast, where dehydrated pine needles are very combustible.

In 2018, for example, Hurricane Michael dampened about 1.3 million hectares of long -leaf pens in the Florida Panhandle, which dried and fueled the Bertha Swamp Road fire in 2022 that burned more than 33,000 hectares.

Some fire experts are also concerned that the extra sunlight on the landscape can cause the growth of plants such as Rhododendron and Mountain Laurel in the southern Appalache, which burns intensely as they set fire to.

“And now we have full sunlight in these areas that previously did not get full sunlight,” Gary C. Wood, a retired worker in North Carolina Forest Service, who now coordinates strategies for running the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, told The Post and Courier. “So that things can really increase, growth-wise, and it will have a potential impact of a firefighting.”

Combat fire with fire

Although a wide amount of research clearly shows that climate change is attracting more intense fires in the West, scientists are still extinguishing the direct climate connection for flames in the southeast. But some studies do show that warm -up is to set up conditions in which wildfires thrive throughout the region.

“Droughts in the southeast and many other areas of the country are expected to become more intense and more frequent due to climate change,” Iglesias said. According to a 2024 study, it could dramatically increase the amount of forest burned in the southern Appalache.

To combat this, forest drivers in this region often planned, contain fires known as prescribed burns, which help clean up dry plants before they can attract larger infernos. However, there are some roadblocks for this strategy. More than 50 percent of the 751 million acre forest land in the US is privately owned, and these owners decide how their land is managed. This means that government agencies are needed to get homeowners’ consent before they get off to a storm or to allow prescribed burns on their land. Grist has a growing pressure from some groups to help homeowners in North Carolina embrace this fire control strategy, Grist reports.

A further snag is that climate change can reduce the number of days that soil managers can practice prescribed fire in the southeast, according to a 2024 study. Vegetation must be dry enough to set fire and burn, but the temperature and winds must be moderately low to prevent the fire from becoming out of control – conditions that rise less as the world temperatures as the world temperatures become less predictable. Like wildfires, prescribed burns can also release air pollution, which can negatively affect the air quality. My colleague Lee Hedpeth covered this issue, which is currently happening in Birmingham, Alabama.

At the same time, the Trump administration has funding and freezes on programs that have supported firefighting over the past few weeks, leaving large parts of the country unprepared to tackle major wildfires, experts say.