60 Minutes joined up with Tom Boatner, who after 30 years on the fire line, became chief of fire operations for the federal government.
"A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have been extremely rare 15, 20 years they're commonplace these days," Boatner says.
"Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it's just another day at the office. It's been a huge change," he adds.
Asked what the biggest fires now are, Boatner says, "We've had, I believe, two fires this summer that have been over 500,000 acres, half a million acres, and one of those was over 600,000 acres."
"You wouldn't have expected to see this how recently?" Pelley asks.
"We got records going back to 1960 of the acres burned in America. So, that's 47 fire seasons. Seven of the 10 busiest fire seasons have been since 1999," Boatner says.