Following the wildfires that ravaged western North Carolina over the weekend, Steve Troxler, Commissioner of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS), told lawmakers this week that North Carolina is the No. 1 state at risk for wildfires. Troxler faces the beginning of the spring fire season with an overworked, underpaid department and $5 billion in losses. 

“In all my years in agriculture, I’ve never seen a year like 2024 with the severity of the weather conditions and production conditions that we have, and throw on top of that low commodity prices, it’s been awful, and the result of that has been a $5 billion loss at the farmgate level,” said Troxler. 

According to two renowned economists, Dr. Jeffrey Dorfman and Dr. Blake Brown, both agriculture professors at North Carolina State University (NC State), the state has suffered approximately $5 billion in losses in 2024 due to weather and production conditions.

“I think all of you have seen what happened in Los Angeles and that is a terrible, terrible situation,” said Troxler. “You hear about wildfires in the west every year, but do you know who the number one state is as far as the danger of wildfires and urban interface? The state of North Carolina, and it’s getting worse as time goes on.” 

Troxler repeatedly emphasized to the Joint Committee of Appropriations on Agriculture and Natural and Economic Resources that his department is overworked and understaffed. There are 300 open positions, 100 of which are in the NC Forest Service division. Troxler emphasized that a salary lapse is one of the primary barriers to the staffing issue. He has requested salary money three times so that salaries could be increased to a competitive rate. Troxler also emphasized these concerns during the Council of State meeting earlier this week. 

“I want you to know today we are not prepared to handle a massive wildfire situation, especially in the mountains of North Carolina,” continued Troxler. “Helene put a tremendous load of fuel on the ground; trees and limbs are lying there. It’s not going to go away; in fact, as it dries more and more and more, the fire danger is going to get worse, and it’s not going to go away in one year. It’ll probably take at least three years for a lot of this material to rot out to the point that it’s not a tremendous fire lake.”

Prescribed burns have proven to be one of the most effective forms of wildfire management, and North Carolina is one of 11 southern states with a burn manager certification program. According to Margaret Young from the fiscal research division of the North Carolina General Assembly, the NC Forest Service receives $1 million in recurring funds from the state budget appropriated by the NCGA to fund the Prescribed Burn Cost Share Program. The program supports private forest owners in paying for prescribed burns as a form of forestry management. During FY24, 170 burns occurred on more than 8,000 acres; 77% were on 100 acres or less. Cost share reimbursement to landowners totaled $190,419. 

“I hope you look back at what happened to Tennessee (2016), and that area right across the border where you know homes were lost, lives were lost, the whole town of Gatlinburg basically burned up,” urged Troxler. “Think about that, but that’s kind of what we’re looking at. So, I know we’re not prepared to handle a situation like that.” 

Wildfire response is one of the most extensive tasks of the NC Forest Service. There are two primary wildfire seasons in North Carolina, one in the spring and one in the fall; we are at the beginning of the spring season, according to Young. During the 2023-24 wildfire season, 5,766 wildfires burned more than 28,130 acres. The largest of these fires was the Collett Ridge Fire, which burned 5,419 acres. The total estimated suppression cost for the season was $7.6 million. There were 329,662 on-call hours valued at almost $792,997. 

“Most of the time, we have to depend on western firefighters to come all the way across the country and help us, and there’s no fund for me to pay to do that,” said Troxler. 

So far in 2025, 1,830 fires have burned 4.925.3 acres, according to Young. On March 2 alone, the day that wildfires erupted across North and South Carolina, 97 fires broke out, burning 224.5 acres. The largest of these first was the “3910” fire in Polk County. As of March 2, this fire was only 30% contained, with 630 acres burned. 

Related: Statewide burn ban in NC takes effect Friday morning

The preceding article originally appeared on March 7, 2025 at The Carolina Journal’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Any views or opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Carolina Leadership Coalition.