Vermont - wildfires?

I was in Vermont recently for several days, I'm back now. When I was in Vermont, I heard about a small wildfire (about 20 acres) that burned in or near the Groton State Forest in Caledonia County Vermont. I don't quite recall where I first heard about the fire, perhaps it was in a newspaper that I picked up. In any event WCAX TV reported on the fire on July 10, as did the Burlington Free Press.

Sometime after I began to write about aerial wild land firefighting and because I have been going to one particular corner in northeastern Vermont during the summer for more years than I can remember, I got curious about wildfires in Vermont. As I have done on previous occasions, I visited the forest fire control webpage of the VT Division of Forestry and downloaded a copy of their 2010 Fire Statistics (I believe that this is an MS word document).

According to the 2010 Vermont Fire Statistics Report, there were 88 fires in 2010, burning 83.83 acres. Of the 88 fires, 87 were attributed to human causes. The ten-year averages are interesting: 119.4 fires and 215.37 acres burned. Over the ten-year period (2001-2010), 2005 was the peak fire year with 221 fires burning 597.14 acres. This short report also breaks down fires by county for 2006 to 2010 and gives rainfall data for the 7-month 2010 fire season (March 1 through October 31) for four five locations: Brighton (Nulhegan) -- 33.70 in.; Elmore -- 36.91 in.; Essex -- 33.92 in.; Danbly -- 35.01 in.; and Marlboro -- 35.68 in.

I summarized this report for you because it spoke to what had been my sense over the years that wildland fires in Vermont are often small. Of course, I knew that my sense of things could be wrong, which is why I wanted to get some numbers from the Vermont Division of Forestry.

I need to emphasize, that I only had access to fire statistics from the VT Division of Forestry for a ten-year period (2001-2010). The 2011 reports are not available, and I have not yet been able to find any "data" for Vermont wildfires before 2001. So far, the best that I can come up with is from the Vermont Division of Forestry's Timeline of Forestry in Vermont referencing a 5,000 acre wildfire in 1903 and 106 wildfires in 1908 that burned 16,000 acres (no specifics provided).  I have gotten curious about Vermont's wildfire history and I'll keep looking around as time allows. If I find anything, I'll report back here.

I do know that there were large wildfires in 1947 in northern New England, specifically in Maine, including but not limited to Acadia National Park. New Hampshire also saw wildfires in 1947. I don't know if Vermont experienced wildfires in 1947.

I found a reference for New Hampshire on webpage from the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, an article called Fire On the Mountain. The article itself seemed to be undated, but I did some digging on Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests' Forest Journal webpage, found here, finding a dated reference. I scrolled down to July 2008, and saw that the Fire on the Mountain article is dated July 6, 2008. In the section on fire history in the article, they refer to Goshen, Claremont, Goshen and Sunapee, all these places are in NH. In addition, the Fire on the Mountain article references a a 1941 fire in Marlow NH.

Unless something comes up between now and Friday (July 27), I'll offer some reflections on the Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact and what this regional compact means to me as a seasonal property owner in northeastern Vermont.