Humans Caused 75% Of Idaho Wildfires in 2023

When you decide to call Idaho your home, you may not know it, but you're automatically agreeing to a few things:

• You'll hear more potato jokes than you're comfortable with
• You have to watch at least one season of Breaking Bad just to see Aaron Paul
• It's generally frowned upon when you set things on fire here

It's that last part that's the sticking point for this writer today.

According to the latest statistics, of all the recorded wildfires in Idaho in 2023 so far, 75% of them were caused by humans. For those keeping score at home, it's 78 fires caused by lightning, and 206 human-caused fires. That's awful.

Even worse, the cost of fighting said human-caused fires is expected to reach up to $17.4 million dollars by the end of 2023. That's not cheap.

This writer isn't going to pretend to be a fire expert. I'm not. However, here's a few general rules I follow so I am not one of those humans causing a wildfire:

• Don't shoot off fireworks on grass. Ever. No one cares if it worked last year
• If you do not know how to properly start, maintain, and extinguish a fire in the wilderness, do not start one
• Still in the wilderness? Don't shoot off fireworks
• Have a fire extinguisher handy at all times whenever working with any kind of fire
• Again, with the fireworks? Can't you just go to a fireworks show like a normal person?

Jokes aside, please be careful out there. Millions of dollars worth of damage is being done, animals are being killed and losing their homes, and we just want to see Idaho stay as beautiful as she always has been.