The National Interagency Fire Center has held the National Preparedness Level at 4 — the second-highest rating on the five-point scale — as wildfire activity continues to escalate across the American West and interior. As of July 13, more than 16,800 firefighting personnel are assigned to active incidents nationwide, with 16 Complex Incident Management Teams and one National Incident Management Organization actively supporting large fire operations. The pressure on national resources is substantial, and fire managers warn that another significant week of fire weather could push the nation to Preparedness Level 5 — full mobilization — for the first time since 2021.

Aviation Resources Fully Committed

National aviation assets are fully committed to fire operations. Two Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) C-130 airtankers and support personnel from the California Air National Guard's 146th Airlift Wing have been deployed to San Bernardino and Santa Maria, California, supplementing the contract airtanker fleet during this period of elevated demand. MAFFS activations — which require a formal request from the U.S. Forest Service and approval from the Secretary of Defense — signal that private-sector airtanker capacity has been overwhelmed by concurrent fire activity.

Single engine air tankers (SEATs), Type 1 and Type 2 helicopters, and lead planes are in high demand across the Northwest, Northern Rockies, Great Basin, and California geographic areas, with some ordering queues extending several days for lower-priority incidents.

Incident Management Teams Deployed Across the West

With 16 Complex IMTs (Type 1 and Type 2) deployed, the national system is operating near its practical capacity for large incident management. Each Complex IMT is capable of managing fires with budgets exceeding millions of dollars per day, coordinating hundreds of personnel, and handling the complex logistics of multi-day, multi-operational period firefighting campaigns. When these teams are all assigned, smaller and newly emerging fires must be managed by local and regional teams with less overhead capacity — a situation that increases risk on rapidly developing incidents.

The Northwest Picture

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (NWCC) in Portland, which coordinates wildfire resources across Oregon, Washington, and parts of Idaho, has been operating at an elevated tempo. The simultaneous Conflagration Act invocations in Oregon for the Olive Butte and East Evans Creek fires drew heavily on in-state mutual aid resources, while the Transfer Fire in Washington added pressure on the Cascade/Pacific Northwest geographic area's overhead pool.

Fire managers at the NWCC are monitoring additional potential ignitions with concern, particularly as Red Flag Warning conditions persist through mid-week across the Inland Northwest and eastern Oregon.

Year-to-Date Trajectory

The 2026 fire season's pace has significantly outrun both 2025 and the 10-year average. Through July 13:

  • 2026: 39,090 fires / 3,586,194 acres
  • 2025 same period: 37,672 fires / 2,463,121 acres
  • 2024 same period: 24,320 fires / 3,018,498 acres

The acreage total already exceeds 2023's entire-year total of approximately 2.4 million acres by a wide margin. If the current trajectory continues through the traditional August-September peak, 2026 is on course to be one of the worst fire seasons in the modern record.