Nobody would ever call the west side of the north Cascades dry country, everybody knows that...but when a fire does get going, you have fuel out the ying-yang. Can you say conflagration?
Except for a very few isolated deep, wet, north-facing creek bottoms, there isn't a tree over 350 years old on the entire 1.25 million acres of the Mt. Hood NF. Species that make 800-1000 years if given the optimal conditions. That translates into solid evidence of an absolutely monsterous fire of epic proportions about early 1500's. It could happen again, I suppose...but there were no air tankers, helicopter buckets, Smokejumpers, Hotshot crews, or heli-rappelers back then.
Maybe we'll dodge the bullet. Maybe we'd be better off in the long run if we didn't.