US wildfires

Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a large wildfire. Most of those residents would have had to evacuate, and many would have been exposed to smoke and emotional trauma from the fire. Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter. Those statistics reflect how the number of people directly exposed to wildfires more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, my team’s new research shows. But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires. Instead, three-quarters of this trend was driven by intense fires growing out of control and encroaching on existing communities. A wildfire in 2017 dest...

It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend. In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020. This trend is strongly influenced by major fires in 2017, 2018 and 2020, including destructive fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa, California, and in Colorado, Oregon and Washington. In fact, in nearly every Western state, more homes and buildings were destroyed by wildfire over the past decade than the decade before, revealing increasing vulnerability to wildfire disasters. What explains the increasing home and structure loss? Surprisingly, it’s not just the trend of burning more area, or simply more homes being built where fires historically burned. While those trends play a role, increasing home and structure l...

Wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive across the U.S., as the country is seeing in 2024. Firefighters were battling large blazes in several states from California to North Dakota in early October 2024, including fires burning near homes and communities. Research shows wildfires are up to four times larger and three times more frequent than they were in the 1980s and ‘90s, with some consuming hundreds of thousands of acres in a single blaze. Lightning strikes are one cause, but the majority of wildfires that threaten communities are sparked by human activities. Metal from cars or mowers dragging on the ground can spark fires. So can power lines touching trees. Officials confirmed on Oct. 2 that a broken power line started the deadly 2023 Maui fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina, Hawaii. California’s largest fire in 2024 started when a man pushed a burning car into a ravine near Chico. The fire destroyed more than 700 homes and buildings. Although...

Wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive across the U.S., as the country is seeing in 2024. Research shows wildfires are up to four times larger and three times more frequent than they were in the 1980s and ‘90s, with some consuming hundreds of thousands of acres. Lightning strikes are one cause, but the majority of wildfires that threaten communities are sparked by human activities. Metal from cars or mowers dragging on the ground can spark fires. A broken power line started the deadly 2023 Maui fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina, Hawaii. California’s largest fire in 2024 started when a man pushed a burning car into a ravine near Chico. The fire destroyed more than 700 homes and buildings. What makes these wildfires so destructive and difficult to contain? The answer lies in a mix of changing climate, the legacy of past land-management practices, and current human activities that are reshaping fire behavior and increasing the risk they pose. Fire...