North Idaho residents shouldn't expect huge plumes smoke from the Panhandle forests this summer, according to the undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"So far, it looks like an average fire season for your part of the country," said Harris Sherman, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, in an interview with The Press last Thursday.

That means limited fire activity is expected on the 2.5 million acres of Idaho Panhandle National Forests, Sherman said.

That's in step with last year, when the region tallied 77 wildfires that affected 12,084 acres of land, he said. The federal agency also conducts prescribed burns on roughly 4,000 acres each year.

Pretty low, on the ladder of devastating holocausts.

"When you contrast that to other parts of the country, with 100,000 or 150,000 acres burned, it gives you a sense of the difference in magnitude," Sherman said.

Gary Darrington, fire warden with the Idaho Department of Lands Micah office, agreed that the moisture the area has garnered indicates a moderate fire season.

"The climate conditions are following what's pretty average," Darrington said, adding that the last three years have seen mild seasons.

The IDL office is prepping as always by training a nine-person fire crew to keep on hand for the season, Darrington said, with two staffed engines.

The last devastating wildland fire Darrington saw in the region was in 1991, he said, when severe winds toppled power lines, flames spreading rapidly across several thousand acres.

Some homes were lost and one individual killed, he remembered.

"It was overwhelming at first. Pretty much chaos," Darrington said. "We couldn't do a whole lot until those winds died down."

Another such fire storm is always possible to occur again, he noted.

"It just takes the right conditions," he said. "With the wet weather now, we're probably safe for awhile."

Jim Lyon with Northern Lakes Fire District said the district is partaking in its annual wildfire training, too.

The major safety issue, he said, is whether rural homeowners are equipping their homes to be defensible against fires. Home-saving precautions include clearing brush in a wide radius around the home, de-limbing the lower sections of nearby trees and not storing wood by the home.

"People need to take responsibility for protecting their homes. They really shouldn't expect the fire department to show up during a wildfire and save their home if they've got wood stacked up in piles by their house," Lyon said. "We can't defend a house that's sitting there ready to burn."

More fire prevention tips are available at www.idahofirewise.org.

Lyon said district firefighters are also willing to visit district homes to give tips.

While his district has previously hired seasonal staff to man remote areas of Hayden and Twin Lakes during fire season, Lyon said, the district might not be able to afford that this year because of the failed levy.

"We'll still respond (to those areas), it just takes longer to respond back in those areas," he said.

Sherman noted that while recent Panhandle fires have been tame, other parts of the country saw record-breaking conflagrations in recent years, like Texas and New Mexico.

"Prior to the year 2000, it's rare we would exceed 5 million acres of fire activity in the U.S.," Sherman said. "In six of the last 10 years, we've seen an excess of 7 million acres impacted by fire."

Experts predict the nation will exceed 10 million acres in the near future, he added, attributing the pattern to climate changes and that many forests are in need of restoration.

Despite North Idaho's optimistic forecast, Sherman added, he cautioned against growing complacent.

"Remember back in 1910, you had the largest fire in the history of the U.S. when the big burn occurred," he said. "Nowhere in the U.S. is immune to fire."