The tragic L.A. fires have gripped the country. And in the West, many wonder whether their communities could be at similar risk.
The death toll of the historic fires is now over 25, and thousands of structures have been destroyed. Estimated losses are measured in the tens of billions of dollars.
“What played out in L.A. could easily occur in other communities, other cities across the West and even outside the West,” said Kimiko Barrett, the senior wildfire researcher at Montana-based Headwaters Economics.
She said that’s because the confluence of climate change-fueled extreme wildfire and increasing development in the so-called wildland-urban interface (WUI) is not at all unique to L.A. Barrett and others have been arguing more attention needs to be paid to the urban part of the WUI. And that too much emphasis has been placed on interventions in the wildlands – like prescribed fire – as a way to protect structures.
“Wildland fuel treatments are seen as the primary tool to reduce structure loss despite decades of research demonstrating that the conditions of the structures and their immediate surroundings are largely responsible for loss,” a white paper she co-authored last year reads. “This is a community responsibility.”
Barrett advocates for a number of policy changes: fire-safe building codes and zoning regulations at the local level; funding, staffing and technical support for communities at the state and federal levels; and the creation of a federal interagency body to coordinate and support home hardening and other resilience efforts.
“It has to happen at all these scales,” Barrett said.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
