The wildfire season is Northeastern Oregon has had a disappointing start.

The fire reports from local, state and federal agencies bear a troubling similarity, in particular the phrase “human-caused.”

On June 26 there was one such fire in the Wallowa Mountains southeast of Union.

On June 25 there was a trio of human-caused fires, two northeast of Baker City and one near Meacham.

On June 24 there was a pair of fires, one in Baker County northwest of Baker City, the other on the Umatilla National Forest south of Ukiah.

A day earlier there were two other fires, sparked by people rather than by lightning, both near La Grande.

There was a human-caused blaze near Baker City on June 22, another east of Pendleton on June 21, and fires on June 19 north of Imnaha, in Wallowa County, and on June 17 near Medical Springs, in southern Union County.

None of these blazes was big. The June 24 fire on the Umatilla National Forest was the largest, at 13.35 acres.

But the fire danger is rising with every passing day that brings above-average temperatures but no rain.

Rainfall in June has been below average across the region. Baker County has been particularly parched, with the Baker City Airport on pace to have its driest June since 1962.

The conditions prompted the Oregon Department of Forestry to declare the start of fire season in Northeastern Oregon on June 22, imposing restrictions on logging and other activities on about 2 million acres of private and state forest lands in the region.

If this weather pattern continues — and it probably will, as hot and dry weather typically dominates during July and August and often extends well into September — fires that start under circumstances similar to the blazes earlier in June could rapidly turn into conflagrations.

Summer is also prime lightning season, an ignition source we can’t control.

That’s not the case, though, with the vast majority of human-caused fires.

Those can result from accidents, such as a car that has a tire blow out on the freeway, creating a shower of sparks from the metal rim rolling on the asphalt.

But almost all human-caused fires are completely avoidable. The June 22 blaze near Baker City, for instance, was caused by two juvenile boys who threw a smoke bomb.

“We’ve had a number of human-caused fires as of late, and they’re all preventable,” said Matt Howard, district forester for ODF’s Northeast Oregon District. “Folks need to look at the fire conditions, not the calendar. It’s uncharacteristically dry for (late) June.”

With the Independence Day holiday approaching, we need to be especially diligent in preventing human-caused fires. Unless the summer is unusually placid, lightning will spark dozens of blazes. Human-caused blazes divert firefighters, a problem likely to become more acute later in the summer as fire season reaches its apex across the West, heightening competition for resources such as retardant tankers and helicopters that play a key role in dousing blazes before they get out of control.