…The federal appropriations and Forest Service and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for wildland firefighting has gone from about $1 billion a year on average during the 1990s, to now on average over $3 billion per year. So the cost has tripled. And we’re trying to determine what percentage of that cost is attributable to the building of homes on fire-prone lands.
The Forest Service estimates that anywhere from 50 to 95 percent of total firefighting costs are related to homes. Our estimates are more on the order of about 30 percent. Either way, it’s significant. If it’s 30 percent it would be about $1 billion a year…