Are wildfire risk maps necessary? And will they make your insurance premiums go up?

The recent wildfires in Los Angeles show that wildfire risk maps are — tragically — very accurate. But across the United States, fire chiefs, elected officials and resident are pushing back on efforts to map wildfire risk claiming that these maps only increase insurance premiums for residents. Join Ryan and Doug in this episode to discuss the history of hazard mapping in the US and to hear, definitively, how risk maps affect your insurance.

Links referenced in this episode:

Wildfire Risks to Communities

California’s Fire Severity Hazard Zones map

State of Oregon Wildfire Hazard Maps

State of Colorado Wildfire Risk Public Viewer

This podcast is a production of Headwaters Economics and made possible by generous support from the USDA Forest Service and private foundations. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

Episode hosts

Ryan Maye Handy

Ryan is a wildfire and land use expert for the Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program. Her experience as an urban planner and former journalist brings invaluable insights to communities that must prepare for increasing wildfire risks. 

See more about Ryan

Doug Green

Doug brings two decades of professional experience in fire departments and as a land use planner to the Community Assistance for Wildfire program. His practical insights and expertise in fire operations has supported dozens of communities working to reduce wildfire risks.

See more about Doug

Transcript

Edited for clarity

View transcript

Ryan Maye Handy: Hi everyone, and welcome to Burning Questions, a podcast about living with wildfire. I'm Ryan Handy.

Doug Green: And I'm Doug Green.

Ryan: We are urban planners and wildfire experts for a non-profit, Headwaters Economics, based in Montana, and we help communities around the United States reduce their wildfire risk using land use codes.

Sounds wonky, I know, but bear with us. Our years of research show that the best way to combat wildfires is to think about how and where we build. So Doug and I spend a lot of time thinking about building codes, zoning, landscaping, water planning. “Why do these things matter” you say? Well, we're going to get into that, but in short, all of these things can help your community survive a wildfire.

Today, we're going to start by talking about one of the most fundamental things we support at Headwaters and that’s mapping wildfire risk. We are partners with the USDA Forest Service on a project called Wildfire Risk to Communities. It’s a free, easy to use website with wildfire risk maps for every community in the country and you can find it at wildfirerisk.org.

So today, we have a series of burning questions about these risk maps that I'm going to be asking Doug. And these questions include; Why do we need these maps? Why are they so controversial? And how do they affect things like home or property values or insurance rates? 

These maps have been on my mind a lot recently, given the wildfires in Los Angeles, and also some of the feedback we've been hearing from firefighters and community members that we work with around the country. And I have to say that I think these maps are more necessary now than ever. In Los Angeles, for instance, our wildfire risk maps overlapped very closely with the fire perimeters of the Palisades and the Eaton fires, which means that these maps can be pretty accurate and can really predict where the worst wildfires can happen, given the right conditions.

But lately, there has been a lot of concern that maps like these trigger insurance rate hikes or may affect private property values, and these concerns are really growing even more as wildfire risk goes up around the country. So despite this increased scrutiny of wildfire risk mapping, we do actually have a really good history of risk mapping in the United States, and we do this, we hope, to try to predict the next disaster. And maybe prevent it. 

So the best example of this, I think, is from the 1960s and still in effect today, and it's the National Floodplain Mapping System. In the late 60s and early 70s, the U.S. government decided that it had to map flood risk for much of the same reason that we believe in mapping fire risk.

Floods were relatively predictable. They were devastating. They killed people. They destroyed communities. But while floodplain mapping is mandatory, as is, by the way, having flood insurance, if you have a mortgage on a property in a floodplain, wildfire risk mapping is not mandatory. All the same, lots of places are doing it, not just Headwaters, but no one quite does a wildfire risk map in the same way, or at the same scale, or even with the same data. And while these many different states and communities and agencies are embracing wildfire risk mapping, it's still, as I said, really controversial. But we believe in doing it, and we want to make a case for it. So, let's get to it.

So, Doug, I want to start with the basics here. Walk me through a little bit of what these maps show and how detailed they are.

Doug: Thanks, Ryan. First, I want to take a step back and put this situation into context. As the listeners know, the current wildfire situation has become extremely challenging and a complex problem. In the past, we always believed that we could overcome this wildfire problem through increased suppression efforts and resources. We basically felt that by buying more fire trucks and hiring more firefighters, we could solve this problem and, and it worked for a while, but as a wildfire problem, it got more and more complex and intense, we realized that this was not going to work. And we feel that one of the most important pieces to this puzzle is wildfire data and wildfire risk maps. You know, Ryan, if you think of it this way, without risk maps, we're essentially fighting these fires blindfolded. Risk maps allow us to understand the actual hazard, to assess the risks, and to inform planning decisions so we can prioritize resources before, during, and even after a wildfire event. So with that in mind, Headwaters Economics helped develop the Wildfire Risk to Communities website in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service. And we designed this to help community leaders like elected officials, community planners, and fire managers understand how their risk varies across their community, hoping to help them prioritize actions to mitigate that risk.

Ryan: So I'm glad that you mentioned the community piece of this, because it reminds me of the thing that surprised me about these maps the first time I saw them, and that was that I couldn't zoom in to see an individual property. Like I couldn't zoom in to see my property here in Montana, but instead I could zoom in to see, say, the town I live in in Montana. So these maps are at a pretty high level, and I thought that was really interesting. Interesting and also different from other risk maps that I know. So why do our maps stay at this zoomed out community perspective?

Doug: Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, that was our intention of this project from the beginning. We realized that there was a need for a national scale project that looked at region wide wildfire risks across the country. This was really the first time that maps and data about community wildfire risks had become available nationwide. That being said, it also means these maps have their limitations, right? Listeners need to remember that the data does not reflect parcel level risks. The maps are designed to consider risks across a community or across a county, across a neighborhood and not at an individual house level. So it can give you an excellent indication of the wildfire risks, again, in your neighborhood, but we know wildfire doesn't care about property boundaries or city limits. So that's why we felt it was extremely important that we should have a community wide mapping project that helped direct community wide wildfire mitigation efforts, which is what matters most.

Ryan: So, let's compare this to something that I think people might be more familiar with, which is floodplain mapping. As I mentioned earlier, the federal government maintains floodplain maps, and you can zoom in on those maps to view the parcel or individual property. Level and that amount of detail, I think, is really important for flooding because generally speaking, if your home is in the floodplain, it will trigger a requirement for you to buy flood insurance. But, as you said, wildfire maps, or at least the ones that we maintain at Headwaters only provide this broad community picture but talk to me a bit about how floods and fires are different, how they threaten homes, and how they destroy communities in different ways. Because I think that's reflected in how we map them a little bit.

Doug: Yeah, for sure, Ryan. That's a great question. Floods and fires are two very different types of hazards, but they're both extremely difficult to map. Flood mapping does have a head start on wildfire mapping, as we've been attempting to map flood risk on a national scale for more than a half a century. Floodplain mapping is not perfect though, and there's still some inaccuracies with it. Like flooding, we can map where wildfires are most likely to occur and what communities might be affected. And again, that's what these maps on  Wildfire Risk to Communities show. Unfortunately, we can't predict where and when the ignition source will be. We can't map the variables that consistently change and affect how and where a fire will burn.

And as we know, wildfires primarily ignite homes with embers, or basically little sparks or burning pieces of ash, which can travel miles ahead of an actual flame. And these embers ignite landscaping, bark mulch, and debris and gutters, which can all cause a home to ignite.