…A January report from Headwaters Economics, which put the the cost of fighting wildfires for the federal government at nearly $3 billion per year. Roughly a third of that total is spent protecting private property. The costs are only expected to increase as more people move into the wildland-urban interface and the intensity of wildfires increases due to climate change.
A 2009 Headwaters report included several recommendations to reduce the cost to federal taxpayers and shift more of the responsibility to local government and, more importantly, homewoners who build in the wildland urban interface. In looking at that reports 10 recommendations, it struck me that the terms fire and flood/hurricane were interchangeable.
- Publish maps identifying areas with high probability of wildland fires.
- Increase awareness of the financial consequences of home building in
fire-prone areas. - Redirect federal aid towards land use planning on private lands.
- Add incentives for counties to sign firefighting cost share agreements.
- Purchase or obtain easements on fire-prone lands.
- Create a national fire insurance and mortgage program to apply lessons from efforts to prevent development in floodplains.
- Allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums in fire-prone areas.
- Limit development in the wildland-urban interface with local zoning ordinances.
- Eliminate home interest mortgage deductions for new homes in the wildland-urban interface.
- Induce federal land managers to shift more of the cost of wildland firefighting to local governments by reducing their firefighting budgets.…