Wildfire

Background

Warmer, drier conditions and longer fire seasons have led to more intense and frequent wildfires, causing significant damage to properties and posing greater risks to human life. As development continues to spread into wildland areas, the danger of wildfires has only increased. The expansion of areas where urban development meets unoccupied land has made more communities vulnerable, highlighting the urgent need for improved preparedness, better building practices, and stronger fire mitigation efforts.

Wildfires not only result in widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure but also create serious public health and environmental concerns. The smoke from these fires is filled with fine particles that can have long-lasting effects on respiratory health, particularly in vulnerable populations. In addition, shifting weather patterns have exacerbated the problem by contributing to longer and more severe droughts, which create the perfect conditions for wildfires to spread quickly. These prolonged dry spells make many regions more susceptible to fire, and as a result, the dangers wildfires pose to both people and property continue to grow. Addressing these challenges requires coordinated efforts to improve resilience, reduce risk, and protect communities from the devastating impacts of wildfires.

Solutions

• Congress should establish an interagency coordinating partnership to reduce program friction and create greater alignment and support to proactively address wildfire risk reduction actions and increase ignition resistance of the built environment.
• Federal officials should integrate wildfire risk reduction measures and technical assistance into existing programs.
• Those responsible should support data procurement and analytic systems to inform building codes/standards and promote ignition-resistant construction and defensible space. Those responsible should evaluate the need to refine and/or expand state and national wildfire hazard datasets.
• Policymakers should create incentives to encourage state, local, and Tribal governments to improve land use planning while increasing the accessibility of federal grants for wildfire risk reduction efforts. Additionally, they should incentivize innovation in affordable building material design, subdivision design, landscape architecture, and safe, sustainable building practices to create more ignition-resistant structures and communities.
• Policymakers should require all-hazard risk disclosures for real estate transactions, including both sales of newly constructed homes and existing homes, for all federally backed mortgages, such as those from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• Co-stewardship and Co-management Agreements – Federal agencies should be ensured the directive and authority to enter into equitable and meaningful co-stewardship and co-management agreements for multi-jurisdictional lands (areas managed across multiple jurisdictions, such as states or districts), and to support Tribal self-governance in order to address wildfire risk reduction, management, and recovery, as well as to enable beneficial fire practices.
• Utility Hardening – Policymakers should establish federal standards for electric utility wildland fire mitigation plans, along with uniform rules and procedures for managing wildfires along federal rights-of-way. Additionally, we recommend including specific language that prioritizes funding to ensure adequate financial support at the federal level.
• Those responsible should change the system of land management agency performance metrics beyond acres treated to actual risk reduced.
• Federal agencies should be directed to develop a strategic plan for the implementation of prescribed fire at a national scale and clarify the extent to which non-federal partners involved in this plan are covered under the Federal Tort Claims Act when burning on federal lands. Additionally, the EPA, DOI, and USDA should be directed to work together to expeditiously evaluate current federal regulations, such as the exceptional events pathway, regarding the treatment of smoke from wildland fire in air quality management programs, with the goal of ensuring that these programs can accommodate the increased use of beneficial fire.
• Policymakers should support data collaboration to advance modeling and improve codes, standards, and the development of ignition-resistant materials.
• The upcoming administration should direct relevant agencies to adopt new and existing technologies to improve the mitigation and management of wildfires and to establish more flexible means of working with the private sector.
• Policymakers should expand FEMA Public Assistance-eligible activities to cover downstream risks caused by wildfires and review or amend existing programs to remove barriers that prevent the distribution of funds for mitigating the impacts of higher flows resulting from wildfires.
• Supporting Communities Impacted by Wildfires – Congress should focus on facilitating the movement of critical firefighting resources and support FEMA in offering guidance for wildfire-impacted areas. These measures would help improve wildfire response and resilience in vulnerable regions.
• SmarterSafer encourages entities to invest in solutions that promote climate finance, with a focus on resilience and strengthened standards. SmarterSafer urges initiatives to explore how private capital and third-party investors can play a role in supporting climate resilience efforts, such as forest resiliency bonds.