Not so many years ago, the alarmist language in a draft legislative report about wildfire -- Towns will burn! Lives will be lost! -- would have sounded shrill and unbelievable.

Even after the great fire season of 1988, the year so much of Yellowstone National Park burned, that fire season was considered an anomaly. Reporters had to go back to the early 1900s to find anything like it.

Then along came the 21st Century, and suddenly summers without bad fires were the unusual ones.

Friday's report, released by the Fire Suppression Interim Committee, lists three main reasons for the change: The long drought, a rising demand for firefighting resources, and the continuing spread of homes into rural areas prone to fires.

"With limited resources," the report said, "it is likely that communities will burn and firefighters and members of the public will be injured or killed."

The committee, chaired by Rep. John Cobb of Augusta, a community near the Rocky Mountain Front that has seen its share of scary forest fires, intends to conduct a series of meetings across the state looking for better ways to fight fires.

Ideas suggested in the report included budgeting more state money up front, rather than retroactively paying fire bills, and perhaps using tax incentives to encourage property owners to reduce their fire risks. Other ideas wouldn't be so popular, such as giving local governments more power to mandate fire-reduction measures, or charging per acre fire-protection fees to people living in "at-risk" areas.

The committee's final report is due next fall, prior to the 2009 legislative session. If the fire season of 2008 continues recent trends, some of those ideas may not seem so drastic after all.