Living with Climate Change: Wildfires

Living with Climate Change

Find out more about the briefings in this series below:

The Polar Vortex

Sea Level Rise

Wildfires

Extreme Heat

Integrating Equity into Emergency Management

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to view a briefing on policies and practices to address wildfires. Billions of dollars are spent fighting wildfires every year, and the cascading economic, health, and societal impacts of wildfires are enormous. Compounding these challenges, wildfires also release greenhouse gases and harmful aerosols into the atmosphere. Over the last century, battling wildfires after they have started has been the main approach to address this threat. Yet, with record-setting fire seasons happening almost every year, more proactive and preventative steps are needed.

Panelists discussed policies and practices that would allow the United States to reduce the overall risk of wildfires, including how innovations in community-centered wildfire protection can improve resilience for humans and ecosystems.

This briefing is part of a series called Living with Climate Change that ran through July and focused on strategies, policies, and programs preparing communities around the country for four major climate threats: polar vortices, sea level rise, wildfires, extreme heat, and integrating equity into emergency management. 

The series ran in parallel with another briefing series, Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions, covering hydrogen, direct air capture, offshore wind, electric vehicle infrastructure build-out, and how start-up accelerators can drive climate action.

Highlights

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Wildfires are a natural part of ecosystems, but human actions have changed the frequency, severity, and size of wildfires. Looking at federal funding for disasters overall, the supplemental appropriations required for U.S. disaster relief far outpace the budgeted annual appropriations, indicating that the United States is underestimating disaster risk on an annual basis. States can set building codes and vegetation management guidelines to reduce wildfire risk and improve community resilience. At the local level, zoning ordinances, subdivision standards, and open space initiatives can integrate wildfire risks into community planning. Cultural burns are led by Indigenous people to restore or enhance culturally important species. They also address wildfire risk because risk reduction requires decreasing the fuel load on the land. The National Institute of Building Sciences and the Federal Emergency Management Agency find that for every dollar spent on upfront wildfire mitigation, there will be four dollars gained in long-term benefits.

 

U.S. Representative Joe Neguse (D-Colo.)

• In the past two years, Colorado experienced three of the most devastating and record-breaking wildfires in its history—the Cameron Peak, East Troublesome, and Marshall Fires.
• The Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act (H.R.5631) aims to safeguard federal firefighting workforce capacity and support these firefighters by enacting changes in their pay and classification.

 

Carly Phillips, Western States Climate Team Fellow, Union of Concerned Scientists

• Wildfires are a natural part of ecosystems, but human actions have changed the frequency, severity, and size of wildfires.
• In California, the five largest fires in state history have occurred in the past five years. The largest wildfire, the August Complex, burned over one million acres.
• Across the United States, the number of wildfires and the number of acres burned per fire is increasing, according to the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity dataset.
• Drivers of the current wildfire situation include a decrease in burning by Indigenous communities and widespread fire suppression [which, counterintuitively, can both exacerbate fires because combustible vegetation accumulates], land management, human development, and climate change.
• Anthropogenic climate change has doubled the acreage burned in Western forests since 1984 primarily due to drier vegetation.
• Climate change results in droughts, higher temperatures, insect outbreaks, greater frequency of extreme fire weather, an extension of wildfire season, and shifts in seasonal dynamics.
• Wildfires impact public health, biodiversity, water quality, infrastructure, and greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Public health: smoke exposure can lead to preterm birth and premature death, among other health impacts.
  • Biodiversity loss: high-severity wildfires can cause ecosystems to transition, such as a burned forest becoming a grassland during recovery.
  • Water quality: fire can increase the load of sediments and toxins in rivers and contaminate drinking water.
  • Infrastructure damage: by destabilizing soil, severe wildfires can cause mudslides, debris flows, and other hazardous situations.
  • Greenhouse gas emissions: wildfires can drive climate change by releasing greenhouse gases as vegetation and soil burns.
• Wildfires in boreal forests in Alaska and Canada could release the equivalent of the annual emissions of 2.6 billion cars, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
• The research paper, “Future Climate Risks from Stress, Insects and Fire Across U.S. Forests,” indicates that under all climate change scenarios, there would be a near doubling in burned area by the end of the century.
• There are solutions to address the risk and impact of wildfires.
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the severity of climate change overall.
  • Remove excess fuel from forests.
  • Restore historical fire regimes through prescribed burns, managed wildfires, and mechanical forest thinning.
  • Promote Indigenous fire stewardship, allowing beneficial fire to return to the landscape.
  • Invest in resilient infrastructure so that water resources, home building materials, and the power grid are resilient in the face of climate change and wildfire.
  • Provide community-level support by addressing housing challenges, hardening and building homes with fire-resistant materials, and promoting air and water filtration.

 

Kimiko Barrett, Wildfire Research & Policy Lead, Headwaters Economics; Director, Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire

• During wildfires, 90 percent of homes impacted by wildfires are ignited by embers or firebrands, which fly one to four miles ahead of a wildfire.
• Homes with flammable materials like wood mulch, fencing, firewood, furniture, and dry debris are highly susceptible to fires in the wildland-urban interface.
• The United States has the technology to build fire-resistant homes. In a video demonstration that Headwaters Economics created in partnership with the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a duplex constructed of common building materials and a duplex constructed with fire-resistant building materials were exposed to flying embers. The building with the common materials was consumed in flames within 10 minutes in all four tests, while the fire-resistant building survived.
• To reduce wildfires, communities are working with federal land management agencies to address hazardous fuel buildup. At the local level, zoning ordinances, subdivision standards, and open space initiatives can integrate wildfire risks into community planning.
• States can set building codes and vegetation management guidelines to reduce wildfire risk and improve community resilience.
• Chapter 7a in California’s building code requires the highest wildfire resistant standard in high-risk areas.
• Austin, Texas, adopted the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code, which integrates wildfire mitigation and high construction standards in highly hazardous areas.
• The city of Vail, Colorado, releases a yearly fire-resistant plant species guide that can inform fire-smart landscaping.
• The home hardening ordinance adopted by Portola Valley, California, is the most restrictive interpretation of high construction standards in wildfire risk areas. It regulates home design such as fencing materials and firewood placement.
• In order to make communities more resilient to wildfire, communities require investment and support. Authorities should:
  • Provide subsidies for homeowners to offset the costs of home-hardening construction features.
  • Create defensible space programs.
  • Improve outreach and education to increase the awareness of wildfire risk.
  • Implement community development plans that integrate wildfire mitigation into the planning and vision of a community.
  • Provide staff capacity and technical assistance for high-risk communities, allowing them to proactively address wildfire risk.
  • Direct funding to disadvantaged communities adversely impacted by wildfires.
• The National Institute of Building Sciences and the Federal Emergency Management Agency find that for every dollar spent on upfront wildfire mitigation, there will be four dollars gained in long-term benefits.
• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) does not include any funding for home wildfire mitigation measures.

 

Margo Robbins, Executive Director, Cultural Fire Management Council, Co-Lead, Indigenous Peoples Burn Network

• The Cultural Fire Management Council is based in northern California on the Yurok reservation.
• Cultural burns are led by Indigenous people to restore or enhance culturally important species. Wildfire prevention is a byproduct.
• Cultural burns help support food sources, medicine, and basket materials.
• Acorns, a staple food, depend on fires to remove weevil parasites.
• In the Yurok territory, hazel is used for the frames of baskets, but it can only be used if it is burned because that causes the plant to send up new shoots.
• Low-intensity fire can improve the quality and quantity of water. Fire reduces the vegetation on the land, allowing for water to flow back to rivers and streams.
• In cultural burns, fires are small and flames stay low to the ground.
• There are multiple strategies for returning fire back to Indigenous homelands. These strategies can be replicated in other places.
• The Cultural Burn Training Exchange is a training for firefighters led by native people. They are guided in how, when, and where to burn to enhance culturally important plant species.
• Demonstration burns are opportunities for people without experience to be trained in safe burn techniques.
• Small family burns are burns less than an acre, which are conducted by families (barring any restrictions by CAL FIRE).

 

Steve Bowen, Managing Director and Head of Catastrophe Insight, Aon

• California experienced $14 billion in total insured losses from wildfires pre-2015 and $48 billion between 2015-2021.
• The traditional wildfire season, from May to November, is being replaced by full-calendar year risk of wildfire.
• Increasing average temperatures and, in particular, increased minimum daily temperatures, are significantly contributing to wildfire risk because the environment is not cooling down overnight.
• Larger fire sizes are associated with greater insured losses. The impact of smoke increases losses.
• Looking at federal funding for disasters overall, the supplemental appropriations required for U.S. disaster relief far outpace the budgeted annual appropriations, indicating that the United States is underestimating disaster risk on an annual basis.
• Upfront spending will save significantly more money in the longer term.
• The insurance industry is focused on identifying risk, engaging stakeholders, making sure people are insured, and communicating risks.
  • Properly identify risk through strengthening computational tools, data, mapping, modeling, and other analytics to identify wildfire risk.
  • Engage public sector stakeholders by communicating with emergency managers at the federal, state, and local levels to determine where people are living, where they are moving, and where prescribed burning and other mitigation measures must be deployed.
  • Address the affordability and accessibility of insurance and bring down the protection gap, which is the portion of economic damage not covered by insurance (it can be 20-50 percent of property losses).
  • Clearly communicate the risk of wildfires to people living in wildland areas who may not fully understand the risk they face from wildfire.
• Communicating and understanding the ‘totality of hazard risk’ includes conversations about hazard frequency, behavior, location, readiness, and risk.
• There are currently over 4.5 million California housing units in the wildland-urban interface, housing 11 million residents.
• Aon is working with academic collaborators to build research into insurance modeling to better understand how risk is changing.

 

Q&A

 

Q: What would be the most effective ways to deploy federal funding to address the risk of wildfires? Where would investments go the furthest?

Phillips:

• There is a real opportunity to invest in forest management.
• Providing resources, funding, and investment in community adaptation is also critical.  For example, air filtration and water filtration capacity.

Barrett:

• Given the level of risk, the United States must deploy all available tools.
• Vegetation and forested landscape measures must be complemented by built mitigation strategies, like home hardening and wildfire-resistant landscaping features.
• In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, there is no money for home hardening and parcel-level building mitigation because it is not in the expertise of the related federal agencies.

Robbins:

• If the United States would widen the circle of who is allowed to conduct fires and provide opportunities and incentives for private landowners to learn how to burn their own properties safely, it would reduce wildfire risk.
• Additional funding is needed for the California Prescribed Fire Liability Pilot Program designed to address gaps in insurance and prescribed burning organizations.
• More training centers across the state of California should be established and co-managed by CAL FIRE and Indigenous people.

Bowen:

• Working with federal and state governments to come up with incentives—especially when it comes to insurance availability and products—is key.
• The United States also needs to subsidize home retrofits or relocation for those who want to take these steps but cannot afford it.
• Identifying and communicating fire risk is critical to mitigating harm.

 

Q: What is the landscape of collaborations and partnerships around wildfires?

Phillips:

• There is an opportunity to have state and federal agencies collaborate with local officials, who have a deeper understanding of their risks, and to communicate these risks to community members.
• Socializing solutions like prescribed burns through these partnerships is key.

Barrett:

• The Wildfire Partners program in Boulder County, Colorado, is a partnership between the planning department, fire department, insurance providers, and homeowners. Homeowners receive a certificate for meeting certain fire mitigation measures, which they can then submit to their insurance providers to get guaranteed coverage in high-risk areas.

Robbins:

• The Cultural Fire Management Council’s partnerships with groups like The Nature Conservancy, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. National Parks Service, CAL FIRE, Oregon Woods, and other tribes have been key.

Bowen:

• Communicating across government, the private sector, and academia will provide greater opportunities to reinforce and highlight shared knowledge.

 

Q: What steps are needed to ensure that wildfire risk reduction is carried about in an equitable way?

Barrett:

• Organizations and communities can use data to identify regions with mobility issues, high elderly populations, lower English proficiency, and higher portions of people with medical conditions.
• Partnering with community leaders on the ground, such as faith leaders, elected officials, and neighborhood ambassadors, will allow resources to be customized to different populations.

Robbins:

• Wildfire risk reduction requires reducing the fuel load on the land.
• It is important for the government to respect the sovereign rights of tribes and the knowledge that tribes have about their homelands and fire.
• Tribes should not have to get burn permits approved by CAL FIRE or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• Tribes should be able to approve their own environmental compliance documents.

Bowen:

• The United States’ current paradigm addressing natural hazards and disaster relief is reactionary instead of proactive.
• For example, it is important to identify communities that are high risk and determine evacuation methods. Paradise, California, saw significant backlogs of people trying to escape because there were not enough evacuation routes.
• When communities are impacted, they must rebuild in a way that reflects newer climate conditions.

Phillips:

• We need to provide communities with the required tools and prepare for the inevitability of these fires.

 

Q: What are your 10-year goals for the type of work your organizations are trying to accomplish?

Robbins:

• Success looks like tribal nations across the United States having the right to burn at the right place and time, not having to get permits from other people, having the right to take care of our homelands with fire, and gaining liability coverage.

Bowen:

• Affordable insurance coverage for anyone who wants it.

Phillips:

• Countries will be moving rapidly towards a net-zero world.
• It will also be important to have fuel treatments, prescribed burns, and cultural burns at scale.

Barrett:

• Due to preventative and mitigation efforts—like targeted fuel treatments, landscape treatments, fuel breaks around a community, hardened homes, protected infrastructure, and evacuation protocols in place—fire can play out its ecological role.

 

Compiled by Abi Shiva and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.