Western wildfires destroyed 246% more homes and buildings over the past decade – fire scientists explain what's changing

By Philip Higuera, Professor of Fire Ecology, University of Montana
Jennifer Balch, Associate Professor of Geography and Director, Earth Lab, University of Colorado Boulder
Maxwell Cook, Ph.D. Student, Dept. of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder
Natasha Stavros, Director of the Earth Lab Analytics Hub, University of Colorado Boulder

It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend.

In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020.

This trend is strongly influenced by major fires in 2017,…

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