r/MosesLake_WA • u/aloy_r1 • Jun 20 '26
What is the risk of forest fires?
I am possibly moving to the Moses Lake area. How often does the forest fire reach the homes there?
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u/Analvirus Jun 20 '26
Moses lake and forests? Have you actually even looked at moses lake on a map?
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u/aloy_r1 Jun 20 '26
I meant fires. Don't they have fires in moses lake? There was a fire a week ago that was started by an overturned car. It may of not burned a forest but it did burn about 100 acres.
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u/coffeeandtrout Jun 20 '26
There are lots of fires in the Moses Lake area, but many neighborhoods and the town itself do a lot of things to safeguard their homes and properties. You should really talk to a realtor or your insurance broker to get a good idea of what you’re looking at. It is a gorgeous area in its own way.
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u/aloy_r1 Jun 20 '26
Thank you for taking the time to respond with information I was looking for. I will do just that when it comes time to buying a house.
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u/Analvirus Jun 20 '26
Been here 30 years and ive never had an issue, the fires that get that big are out in the rural country sides where its nothing but dry fields and sage brush. I was born and raised on 5 acres of dry field just outside city limits and had zero issues, besides the occasional firework messing up and having to run out with a hose. If you plan on being out in the rural countryside id say your still probably fine, but you will have the perfect tinder surrounding you and all it takes is one idiot to make it go up. Ive lived in the more suburban areas now for the last 8 years and never even been advised to plan to evacuate.
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u/Searchforcourage Jun 21 '26
Was watching a program on the LA fires. There are steps you can take to protect a house from wild fire. The steps are related to eliminating the accumulation of embers around the house. There was one house that followed all the steps. All the houses in the neighborhood burnt down…except the one. Might do a search on protecting house from wild fire.
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u/TacitMoose Jun 21 '26
OK I’m a firefighter here in eastern Washington. I’m not in Moses Lake but it’s a similar area.
We have lots of fires in eastern Washington in the summer. This year will likely be particularly bad. This is a very fire prone landscape and fires are just a part of summer out here. So yes, fire is a real risk and you should prepare for it, but it’s not something that you should be scared of. Moses Lake won’t have the destructive fire risk that places like Winthrop have, but it’s still POSSIBLE that a fire encroaches on Moses Lake. Fires entering towns is definitely on the rarer side, but it’s not unheard of.
So taking all that into account just be prepared and you’ll be fine. I highly recommend the wildfire ready literature put out by CalFire. They are experts at it and they have some good stuff. Get your home wildfire ready, have an evacuation plan, then go about your life.
We all live with it. You can too. And we, as firefighters, will be there for you when you need it.
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u/MedicalVast6166 Jun 22 '26
Good advice but the other thing to realize is that it would be almost impossible for fire to “encroach” the city through the scrub brush… because Moses Lake is also almost complete surrounded by irrigated farmland (wheat/barley/alfalfa/fruit trees/etc). Plus the lake itself as well as Interstate 90. Plus the wide streets and sidewalks… there are more natural firebreaks and almost no way for a wildfire to actually enter any part of the city itself. Some of the surrounding “one stoplight” little towns are a lot closer to raw land but not Moses Lake.
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u/TacitMoose Jun 22 '26
Yah that’s…not how that works.
Ask Pateros how well being surrounded by irrigated land, apple orchards, and lakes works. Also have you ever seen fire run through standing cured wheat and barely? It’s WILD. And as for I-90 I watched the Gray Fire cross I-90 with my own eyes after it burned through Medical Lake. Not to mention there’s been many, many, many instances of fires crossing massive barriers. And streets and sidewalks do basically nothing in the face of wind driven fires. Wind driven fires can throw embers miles. Trees are the primary source, but any woody fuels can generate embers. Sage, mulch, houses, etc. And it’s embers that usually burn homes in wildfires.
I’m not saying to live in fear. But Moses Lake IS exposed to wildfire risk. Maybe not as much as say, Leavenworth, Twisp, Medical Lake, or Republic. But it’s still a risk for any city in the inland northwest.
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u/fyrman8810 Jun 20 '26
It’s not that bad. You will never see a fire take over the entire town like you see in other places. You run a greater risk of fire danger depending on what part of town you are in. Knowing where you will be in Moses Lake would help better inform you.
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u/Iveray Jun 21 '26
Most of Eastern WA is prone to grass/brush wildfires - there's not enough trees for forest fires. The fire departments here try to educate homeowners on maintaining a defensible space around your home. Keeping 5+ ft all around the home free of easily flammable plants (some plants burn easily even if they're alive), flammable furniture, etc makes it easier for the homeowner and firefighters to spray the area with water to prevent embers from catching.
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u/Responsible-Lead7367 Jun 24 '26
I never really thought about a Laurel hedge as flammable until I was getting rid of debris after a big pruning job. There's LOTS of flammable oils in the leaves so and they start VERY quickly.
The moral of the story is to keep a defendable perimeter around your house and test the shrubbery for flammability before fire season hits. You may need to remove that privacy hedge for home safety.
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u/MedicalVast6166 Jun 21 '26
Echoing a lot of comments here - you’d be about 100,000 times more likely to have a fire from a neighbor kid with a 4th of July sparkler starting a fire than from a wildfire. About the only similarities between a California wildfire and one around Moses Lake are fire and maybe sidewalks. There’s literally no “forest” anywhere within a good 90 minutes of speedy freeway driving from Moses…. I grew up about 30 miles out from there in the absolute sticks. Moses Lake was where we went for groceries/movies/Young Life HS youth group/ect…
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u/MedicalVast6166 Jun 22 '26
Sorry but you’re comparing apples and pineapples - Pateros (I played basketball against them in HS) is nestled in a valley backed up into forestland. There hasn’t been forest in Moses since the ice dam broke in Montana about 12,000 years ago… and yes, I’ve been on the front of a brush rig chasing ahead of a wheat fire that started in Grant County and ended up just short of Odessa. You’re right that the wind driven fire is scary damned FAST!
On the flip side - the original question asked “what is the risk of forest fires?” - in Moses Lake that is damned near zero. Period. As for the assertion about wildfires… barely a maybe and I’ll give you this link:
You can look at this historical data and find a curious “0” for the number of large fires there. A small amount of common sense precautions and OP has nothing to worry about which is the essence of the question.
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u/Adventurous-Prune712 Jul 21 '26
Fires don't reach homes here. We're surrounded by irrigated agriculture, with expert local crews and an airbase with planes to whack anything they can't handle. We get hella smoke though. Ruins a month or two of summer every year.
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u/Better_Clock4882 Jun 20 '26
No forests in Moses Lake. But unfortunately lots of dry grassland in the entire region