“What we’re telling the public now is, ‘Reduce the risk of fires – if you so choose.’ Imagine if we tried driving our cars like that,” says Dr. Ray Rasker, who is also executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research firm based in Bozeman, Mont. “Why not use regulations, building codes, and subdivision design standards, development codes and ordinances that say, ‘Look if you’re going to build there, there are certain conditions you have to meet first’?”
…The need for action continues to grow. As bad as wildfires have been in recent years, research shows they’re likely to get worse as the US population increases and people build more homes in the WUI, more than 80 percent of which remain undeveloped.
“We keep building more and more homes in harm’s way,” Rasker notes. “Unless we get a handle on development, we’re really not addressing the problem.”
