By John Metcalfe
CityLab
Now is not the time for Seattleites to be throwing loose butts out of car windows. A rash of record-breaking warm weather has created the perfect condition for blazes—in fact, the blaze, if we want to make an analog to theGreat Seattle Fire of 1889. And the National Weather Service is doing just that in this ominously educating bulletin (written in typical all-caps format):
THE GREAT SEATTLE FIRE OCCURRED ON JUNE 6TH 1889...BURNING 25 BLOCKS OF DOWNTOWN SEATTLE NEAR THE WATERFRONT. WEATHER CONDITIONS THAT SPRING WERE QUITE SIMILAR TO THOSE THIS YEAR...WARM AND DRY. SEA- BREEZE WINDS COMING OFF ELLIOTT BAY THAT WARM AFTERNOON HELPED FAN THE FLAMES AND SPREAD THE FIRE FROM ONE BUILDING TO THE NEXT WITH EASE.
Washington has endured weeks of unusually torrid weather. Seattle saw its warmest June on record with an average temperature of 68 degrees. And the nation’s dreariest city has been surprisingly rain-free, leaving trees and brush drier now than they normally are in late August.
The weather service notes modern construction and firefighting techniques reduce the risk of another conflagration like 1889’s, which was so destructive Seattle banned wooden buildings from the area, formed a professional fire department, and used the burnt-out wasteland as an opportunity to raise the streets by a couple dozen feet to fix drainage issues. “YET THEY STILL CAN HAPPEN THANKS TO THE WEATHER CONDITIONS,” it warns.
Read the full statement from the agency here.