A new report by catastrophe risk modeller CoreLogic has identified Wyoming and Idaho as the states most at risk for a prolonged wildfire recovery.
While California traditionally tops the list each year for wildfire risk simply because it’s the most populous state, CoreLogic’s approach for this year’s report used different metrics to examine potential recovery efforts.
These include property-related wildfire risk alongside reconstruction resource availability, temporary housing capacity for displaced individuals, and community economic recovery potential among fire-prone regions.
CoreLogic notes that, in states like Wyoming and Idaho, the number of homes at risk is a larger fraction of the total number of homes in the state, and recovery times are likely to be elongated if a larger portion of the population is displaced.
“There’s no denying a state like California is at severe risk for wildfire destruction every year, as seen in the ongoing Dixie Fire,” said Tom Larsen, principal, insurance solutions at CoreLogic.
“But it’s important to acknowledge that not all communities and their catastrophic events are the same, and the road to recovery can look drastically different. Resilience is often measured as how fast you can recover from a catastrophe — and the deeper the wound, the longer it takes to heal.”
CoreLogic also warned that, as a result of climate change, the environment is changing too rapidly to rely solely on wildfire loss history to plan for future wildfire mitigation and response.
That said, it believes probabilistic risk models, which can evaluate simulations of weather variation in today’s environment, can produce planning scenarios relevant to communities now.
“Looking ahead, insurers, city planners and homeowners each play an important role in reducing the devastating impacts of wildfires and they can work together to mitigate future events,” it concluded. “While these natural catastrophes are often unavoidable, they can be prepared for.”
