Not trying to criticize the Forest Service, but is it politically feasible to cut down large amounts of trees in the right areas to prevent this?
Check out "controlled burning" - it effectively achieves the same thing.
And cutting down trees at enough scale to make a difference would likely exacerbate the drought that makes such fires more likely.
Honestly, try to use decomposing wood in a fire sometime. It's not flammable.
CO2 from a forest isn't really something we need to worry about. A 25 year old maple will sequester 400 pounds of co2 in it's lifetime. It can't emit more than that over the years that it decomposes. An average commuter car will emit that in 2 weeks. That's what we need to worry about.