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More than 7 million American homes currently have a “major” risk of wildfire damage and that number will increase to nearly 13 million over the next 30 years, according to a new national wildfire assessment, the first ever to make wildfire risk to individual homes available to the public.
States long plagued by wildfires — such as California, Texas and Nevada — will see conditions worsen, according to the searchable online modeling tool, from First Street Foundation, a climate and technology nonprofit. But as climate change continues to warm the Earth, places like New Jersey, South Dakota and Washington, will also see wildfire risk rise. Half of the US counties that will see the greatest increase in homes facing meaningful fire risk in the next 30 years are in Georgia.
...will be felt in other parts of the country
The fire risk to properties across much of the western US today ...
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Fire risk to properties in Riverside County, CA will be the norm in coastal Carteret County, NC by 2052
Fire risk to properties in McCullough County, TX will be the norm in Jackson County, MS by 2052
In 30 years, Ocean County, NJ properties will have about the same fire risk as those in Mariposa County, CA have today
Yakima County, WA will have similar fire risk as Washoe County, NV by 2052
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Fire risk to properties in Butte County, CA —where the 2018 Camp Fire decimated the city of Paradise—will be the norm in coastal Palm Beach County, FL by 2052
...will be felt in other parts of the country
The fire risk to properties across much of the western US today ...
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
In 30 years, Ocean County, NJ properties will have about the same fire risk as those in Mariposa County, CA have today
Fire risk to properties in Riverside County, CA will be the norm in coastal Carteret County, NC by 2052
Fire risk to properties in McCullough County, TX will be the norm in Jackson County, MS by 2052
Yakima County, WA will have similar fire risk as Washoe County, NV by 2052
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Fire risk to properties in Butte County, CA —where the 2018 Camp Fire decimated the city of Paradise—will be the norm in coastal Palm Beach County, FL by 2052
...will be felt in other parts of the country
The fire risk to properties across much of the western US today ...
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
In 30 years, Ocean County, NJ properties will have about the same fire risk as those in Mariposa County, CA have today
Fire risk to properties in McCullough County, TX will be the norm in Jackson County, MS by 2052
Fire risk to properties in Riverside County, CA will be the norm in coastal Carteret County, NC by 2052
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Fire risk to properties in Butte County, CA —where the 2018 Camp Fire decimated the city of Paradise—will be the norm in coastal Palm Beach County, FL by 2052
...will be felt in other parts of the country
The fire risk to properties across much of the western US today ...
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Fire risk to properties in Riverside County, CA will be the norm in coastal Carteret County, NC by 2052
in McCullough County, TX will be the norm in Jackson County, MS by 2052
In 30 years, Ocean County, NJ properties will have about the same fire risk as those in Mariposa County, CA have today
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
in Butte County, CA —where the 2018 Camp Fire decimated the city of Paradise—will be the norm in coastal Palm Beach County, FL by 2052
...will be felt in other parts of the country
The fire risk to properties across much of the western US today ...
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
in Butte County, CA — where the 2018 Camp Fire decimated the city of Paradise—will be the norm in coastal Palm Beach County, FL by 2052
In 30 years, Ocean County, NJ properties will have about the same fire risk as those in Mariposa County, CA have today
Annual percent chance of fire among properties with any fire risk
Publication of the risk assessment comes as wildfires have become a dramatically greater threat to American property. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says wildfires caused nearly $81.6 billion in damage in the US between 2017 and 2021, a nearly 10-fold increase from the four years earlier, 2012 to 2016, when damages totaled $8.6 billion.
Despite the rising threat, there is no public database that explains individual homeowners’ exposure. First Street says its model will fill a critical gap. “The lack of a property-specific, climate-adjusted wildfire risk tool for individual properties has severely hindered everyone from the federal government to your average American,” said Matthew Eby, First Street’s founder and executive director. The new data, he said, will give owners information they can act on and build support for fire suppression activities at state and local levels.
Predicting a home’s fire risk is challenging. It depends on everything from the materials used in construction — a wood fence versus a metal one, say — the dryness and thickness of vegetation in the surrounding area, the slope of local hills and wind speeds at the time of conflagration.
Yet ever since the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, that killed 85 people and destroyed 19,000 buildings, causing $18 billion in property damage, insurers have been trying to figure out how to calculate the risk. That’s because the 2017 and 2018 fire seasons in California were so severe that it wiped out more than a quarter-century of underwriting profits for the state insurance market, according to Milliman Inc., a risk assessment company that works with insurers.
Newer, sophisticated private models can take into account building materials as well as a home’s proximity to other homes (the closer the homes are, the greater the chances of sparks jumping from one to the other).
When combined with satellite data, the model can show surrounding vegetation and even likely wind and surface temperature conditions to predict fire risk.
First Street used many of the same elements in developing its models, but added a way of ranking the relative risks of each home that is sure to be controversial. Unlike flooding, which is a relatively more common occurrence, there is no common metric used by the insurance industry or the government to determine how much is too much fire risk. So First Street invented a threshold. It decided that even a 1% risk of fire over the 30 years of a mortgage, or .03 % annually, was meaningful.
By contrast, the National Flood Insurance Program considers anyone with a 1% chance annually of facing a severe flood as having “significant” risk, because over the course of a 30-year mortgage, a property would have a greater than 26% chance of facing that 100-year flood.
But First Street assumes that while wildfires are less likely to occur than flooding, they are much more likely to be devastating. As First Street spokesman Michael Lopes explains, “There is no such thing as a ‘small’ amount of wildfire. There’s no 1-to-2 inches of wildfire in your basement.”
So the new model — which is available to anyone on First Street’s website as well as Realtor.com, — looks at 142 million properties in the lower contiguous 48 states and concludes that roughly 61 million have a level of risk too low to mention. But it also finds that nearly 50 million properties have at least 1% of risk over 30 years, which it classifies as minor.
Counties where fire risk to properties will
increase or more than double by 2052
Counties where fire risk to properties will
increase or more than double by 2052
Counties where fire risk to properties will
increase or more than double by 2052
The model deems 20 million properties moderate-risk, with a cumulative risk at 6%. It finds 10 million properties with a 14% or higher chance of burning over the next 30 years, which means they are at major, severe or extreme risk. By comparison, when First Street ran a similar exercise in 2020 to estimate flood risk on an individual property basis, it found 14.6 million homes have a 26% or greater chance of flooding over the lifetime of a 30-year mortgage. Only 4.2 million homes have a similar fire risk by their calculation.
Perhaps not surprisingly, First Street maps of the American West show deep pockets of extreme hazard zones across Nevada, California, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona and Utah. In fact, of the top 10 counties with the highest number of homes with at least some meaningful wildfire risk, half were in California and included Riverside and Los Angeles.
Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Center at San Jose University, says homeowners should take the rankings of their individual houses more as very rough guidance than anything else.
“It’s a great idea,” he said of the public national database, but risk modeling, while improving, cannot yet account for all the variables that go into wildfire risk on a single home basis. “We don’t have a model yet that accounts for why one house gets burned to the ground and the one next door to it is still standing, and that happens all the time,” he said.
But Roy Wright, chief executive officer of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, an industry funded research organization, said that any potential flaws in First Street’s methodology should not undermine the overall value of the exercise. He argues that there is a worrisome lack of awareness from homeowners of fire risk and a shameful lack of action by state and federal government to address the growing danger.
“I have no doubt there will be a critique of the inner workings of their methodology,” he said of the report, “but the questions they are asking of homeowners and the pathways forward they are suggesting are valid.”
Edited by: Amanda Hurley and Dimitra Kessenides