Resources
This white paper explores ways to control the rising expense of wildland firefighting, which now costs the federal government more than $3 billion annually and is likely to increase dramatically. The paper analyzes the factors contributing to rising wildfire costs and provides ten policy ideas for controlling future WUI-related firefighting costs.
A principal reason for the escalating cost of wildland firefighting is the growing number of homes being built in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). This fact has been quantified and demonstrated repeatedly, yet most proposed solutions to hold down or reduce fire suppression costs fail to address it. Suggested fixes—such as increased coordination among agencies and educating homeowners how to live more appropriately near fire-prone lands—are focused on increasing the safety of existing residences in the WUI, but lack the means to control future costs and may unintentionally have the effect of increasing residential growth and subsequent fire suppression costs near fire-prone lands. This paper offers ten ideas for controlling the rising cost of protecting homes from wildland fires.
