By Ray Rasker, Headwaters Economics— …A combination of factors — warming temperatures, longer, more intense fire seasons, a rapidly growing western population — have dramatically increased the cost and risk from wildfires, and now is the time to enact sensible policies that improve safety and hold down taxpayer expenses.
Without action, fire trends will most likely worsen in the near future. Our research in California’s Sierra Nevada found that an annual increase in average summer temperature of 1 degree Fahrenheit is associated with a 35 percent increase in area burned. And in Oregon, a rise in average summer temperature of 1 degree F is associated with an increase of 420 wildfires — a large effect given that, on average, 1,800 wildfires now burn in Oregon per year.
These fires increasingly are happening in and around homes — known as the wildland-urban interface, the area where private and commercial development abuts public, fire-prone lands. CoreLogic, a research company in California, found that from 1990 to 2008, 10 million new homes — more than half of all new homes constructed — were built in the wildland-urban interface.