(Bloomberg) -- U.S. states plagued by historic drought arebracing for an early wildfire season with a cost that may rise ashigh as $1.8 billion, or almost $500,000 more than what’s availableto control the blazes.

Oklahomans fought seven fires in May during what is normally thestate’s quietest period. Flames scorched four times as many acresin Texas from January through May as in the same period a yearearlier. California is also far ahead of its usual pace and isbracing for hundreds more containment battles throughout the mostpopulous U.S. state.

“Drought has set the stage for a very busy and very dangerousfire season,” said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for Cal Fire, as theSacramento-based California Department of Forestry and FireProtection is known. “From Jan. 1 through the end of April, weresponded to 1,250 wildfires. In an average year for that same timeperiod, we would have responded to fewer than 600.”

The 2014 season is repeating a pattern of destructionestablished over the past decade by a combination of hightemperatures, parched vegetation and more people living in woodedareas. Fires feeding on plentiful dry grass, brush and hardwood arerequiring more personnel and money to bring them under control.More than twice as many acres burned across the U.S. through May 9this year than during the same period in 2013, according to theBoise, Idaho-based National Interagency Fire Center.

“With climate change contributing to longer and more intensewildfire seasons, the dangers and costs of fighting those firesincrease substantially,” Rhea Suh, assistant secretary for policy,management and budget at the U.S. Interior Department said May 1 ina statement.

Diverting Funds

Federal officials expect to spend about $470 million more thanthe $1.4 billion that’s been allocated, according to acongressionally-mandated report released May 1. Increasing firecosts required the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department todivert funds from other programs in seven of the last 12 years, thestudy showed. Millions of additional dollars in state and localfunds are spent each year on persistent and ever- increasingblazes.

In Arizona, last year’s record-setting fire season saw 19members of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew --firefighters who work behind the lines to control the spread offlames -- die in the Yarnell Hill fire, the biggest loss of lifefrom a single fire in 80 years. Colorado experienced its mostdestructive wildfire in history. A conflagration in YosemiteNational Park that threatened San Francisco’s water supply becamethe largest ever in the Sierra Nevada.

Snowpack Low

With snowpack that provides water for a third of California’sfarms and cities at only 18 percent of average in some places afterthe driest year in state history, officials expect to spend $221million in emergency funds fighting fires by June 30, said CalFire’s Berlant.

In a normal year, the agency would start hiring seasonalfirefighters this month. Instead, Governor Jerry Brown, a Democratrunning for re-election, ordered 125 firefighters hired for thenorthern part of the state in January and kept seasonal crews inthe south on the job longer.

Cal Fire was “never able to transition out of fire season in2013,” according to a statement. The agency returned to peakstaffing in March in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardinocounties, where equipment and facilities are staffed around theclock.

Dead brush and shrubs are drying out faster than usual inconditions more typical of mid-June than May, according to anoutlook for May through August compiled by the interagency firecenter.

‘Critically Dry’

“Fuels should remain critically dry for most of the upcomingfire season,” the report said, and be “receptive to ignition andfires that are highly resistant to control efforts.”

The risk of significant blazes will also come earlier than usualover much of the U.S. northwest, particularly in Oregon and Alaska,the outlook found. Because of substantial snowpack, the firepotential in the northern Rocky Mountains will be below normal,according to the analysis.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat running forre-election, said yesterday that several fire-prone areas sawbelow-average precipitation this winter including the southwest andthe southeast, in the grip of an extreme drought.

‘Mitigate Danger’

“It’s up to everyone to make sure they are taking the rightsteps to mitigate the danger and be prepared,” Hickenlooper said ina statement. “With forecasts and planning, plus the addition of newresources related to wildfire response, we are doing what we can atthe state level.”

After record-setting wildfire seasons back-to-back, Hickenloopersigned legislation setting aside almost $20 million to buy twofire-spotting planes and hire four helicopters and four largetankers for the effort.

Triple-digit temperatures that came early this year to thepanhandles of Texas and Oklahoma dried grasses on what alreadylooked like a moonscape, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at theNational Drought Mitigation Center at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln.

Dust Bowl-like conditions in those areas and in southeasternColorado and northern New Mexico, last seen during the 1930s, areincreasing fire risk, he said.

“The droughts in California and Texas and Oklahoma areonce-in-a-generation types of droughts with conditions we haven’tseen since the 1970s,” Svoboda said. “In California, the populationhas doubled since the 1970s, putting more structures at risk andincreasing the potential loss due to fire.”

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