Video and highlights from an event that brought together diverse community leaders to explore practices for building fire-adapted communities.
Solutions
Wildfire Hazard Assessments Inform Land Use Planning
Wildfire hazard assessment maps can help communities build safer neighborhoods, prioritize mitigation resources, and adapt to wildfire.
Land Use Planning More Effective Than Logging to Reduce Wildfire Risk
Updated: For communities land use planning is more effective than logging on federal lands to reduce future wildfire disasters.
Communities utilize land use planning to reduce wildfire risks and costs
Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire (CPAW) is helping communities reduce wildfire risks and costs. Four new communities join 26 others this coming year.
Building a Wildfire-Resistant Home: Codes and Costs
A new home built to wildfire-resistant codes can be constructed for roughly the same cost as a typical home.
Full Community Costs of Wildfire
Almost half of the full community costs of wildfire are paid for at the local level, including homeowners, businesses, and government agencies.
Communities Reduce Wildfire Risk Through Land Use Planning
Updated: The Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program now helps 30 communities reduce wildfire risk through improved land use planning.
Planning Tools to Reduce Montana’s Wildfire Risk
County governments, fire districts and service areas, and landowners have many opportunities to reduce wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface through land use planning tools and strategies, though challenges in Montana’s regulatory framework remain.
Fire & Flood: Lessons from Hurricane Harvey for Wildfire
A lack of land use planning amplified the devastation from Hurricane Harvey. Wildfire-prone communities should take note.
Resilient Taos County: Living with Wildfire
This story map provides Taos County residents with information about the ecological role of fire, the region’s wildfire risk, forest restoration projects, and emergency preparedness.
Tennessee Wildfires: Now Is the Time to Plan
The wildfires that burned the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park devastated nearby communities and underscore the need to reduce the risks and costs of future catastrophic events.
Does Insurance Affect Home Development on Wildfire-Prone Lands?
It is unlikely that insurance rates and policies alone will determine whether or not a landowner decides to build a new home on wildfire-prone land.
Summary: Wildfire Costs, New Development, and Rising Temperatures
This summary highlights the major research Headwaters Economics has conducted concerning controlling fire suppression costs, state case studies, and the growth of homes in the WUI.
Rising Wildfire Costs Encourage Better Land Use Planning
Five urban areas in the West and Southwest are taking steps to mitigate wildfire risks and costs through the perspective of land use planning.
Land Use Planning to Reduce Wildfire Risk
Case studies show how five urban areas in the West are using innovative land use planning tools to adapt to the increasing risks from wildfires.
Reducing Wildfire Risk to Communities: Nine Solutions
This report outlines a number of solutions to alter the pace, scale, and pattern of future development in the Wildland-Urban Interface.
Better Planning to Reduce Wildfire Risk: A Summit County Case Study and Lessons for Other Communities
Wildfires pose a growing threat to many communities. As more development occurs near wildfire-prone lands, there is a growing need to reduce risk through improved land use policies and tools.
Lessons for Wildfire from Federal Flood Risk Management Programs
This paper reviews the experience of national floodplain management programs to draw lessons for new approaches to reduce the costs and risks posed by wildfire to properties in the Wildland-Urban Interface.
Wildfire Budget, Incentives, and Missed Opportunities
The failure of Congress to pass wildfire disaster funding is a missed opportunity for two reasons: one to stop ‘fire borrowing’ and second to reduce risks and costs to homeowners and the taxpayer.
Local Responses to Wildfire Risks Are Limited
This study reviews how western communities are addressing wildfire risk, how they have responded to recent major fires, and useful lessons and public policy insights for the future.