Western forests differ from eastern forests because they contain mostly evergreen trees that have a lot of resin in their needles. This resin burns readily, creating an almost explosive flame that rages up the crown, where it jumps easily from tree to tree. The Northeast has many more leafy trees that generally have no resins and therefore don't burn as easily. When the Northeast has droughts, these are the areas where extensive fires tend to occur. Western and eastern forests differ in one more important respect-precipitation.
Many western forests are extremely dry.
While the Northeast doesn't tend to have huge, rampant fires like the West, that doesn't mean there isn't any wildfire danger here. Because of higher population densities and good detection by state and local authorities, fires are usually discovered quickly. They rarely burn more than a few acres. However, with more and more people living in rural wooded areas, the risk of property loss and injuries or deaths has increased. Whenever the Northeast has extremely dry conditions, there is the potential for devastating fires.