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I don't know where you live in Washington, but I live near Spokane and have 20 acres of mostly Ponderosa Pine woods. Half of the year is cold and damp, but late Summer and early Fall is almost always extremely dry and hot. Fire danger is always on our minds during the dry season. A couple of years ago, I had some logging done and sold almost all of my large, mature trees. Unfortunately logging leaves lots of mess--I am still cleaning up cut off branches and piling them. I burn the piles during the wet season with the authority of a Department of Natural Resources fire permit, which costs about $25.
The piling and burning of logging debris cuts down on the fuel supply if a fire should happen to come through my property and hopefully gives a better chance of not losing everything. I try to be a good neighbor and don't burn during times that the air is stagnant, and obviously when there is any chance of the fire getting away. I also talk to my neighbors when I am going to burn--they appreciate being informed and it cuts down on calls to the fire department. At least so far the air pollution authorities do not have jurisdiction over "silviculture" burning if a DNR burning permit has been issued, thought I do not push the issue. I do think that the half dozen days a year yard & garden burning period is really dumb. It usually has been when things burn poorly, or the days happen to be just too windy and it really is just for very small piles. The DNR rules are much more reasonable. Before the white men came to this part of the country, it is believed that ground fires went through the countryside every few years. Those ground fires spared large trees, but burned dry grass and the duff--pine needles, cones and branches that fell off the trees. Those fires might have come from lightning strikes, or might have been purposely started by the local Indians. It cleared out the old junk and allowed the grass to grow better. The burning also unintentionally prevented most catastrophic fires. But since the white men came, fires have been put out as a part of forest management. Now when there is a fire during a dry time of the year, there is a huge load of fuel under the trees. Rather than getting a fire that lazily moves over the ground consuming a little accumulation of duff and dry grass, we get extremely hot fires that create their own draft and can become crown fires, where the fire jumps from tree to tree. In such a situation, almost all the trees are killed and the ground around them becomes virtually sterilized. Such fires are almost impossible to control. That is what happened in much of Yellowstone Park a couple of years ago. You should be concerned about a serious fire going through your property. The best way to have your trees survive such a fire is to reduce the available fuel suply, by raking the duff away from the bases of the tree trunks, cutting off the branches of the trees up 10 or 15 feet up, thinning out small trees and burning the piles you make at a safe time of the year. Although it is probably not legal at this time, the best solution would be to carefully burn off the duff in small sections at a time when the duff is just dry enough to burn, but not dry enough to let the fire really get going and maybe get away from you. That sounds scary to me and maybe is not practical. You also should be concerned for your buildings. Metal roofs and composition roofs may allow a building to survive a serious fire going through. Untreated cedar shingles or shakes will not. It also is very important to keep pine needles swept off roofs. I also have a generator set that is large enough to operate my well pump, as I have seen the power go off in a serious fire situation and it is a really helpless feeling to be unable to move water in an emergency. Lots of trees around a house may look pretty, but the only thing that will save you in a fire storm situation is a defensible space, which means no pine trees close by. I have found that almost any pine forest debris will burn very well if it is fairly dry. A trick to keeping a pile dry is to cover a part of the pile with one of those cheap blue tarps. I have had piles burn well when only about 10% of the pile was tarped and the rest of the pile had snow on it. Alternately, pine cones burn great in a burn barrel, although that is probably illegal too! Sorry this got so long, but your question about the pine cones suggested that you are new to the wooded property. Dealing with fire danger is a very serious topic for anyone who lives on wooded property. Good luck and stay safe.....
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