If nothing else, 2020 showed Washington state residents they can’t stop worrying about wildfires.
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Currently, over 4,400 California firefighters have and continue to battle wildfires that have charred more than 4 million acres since the beginning of the year. The fires have claimed at least 31 lives and displaced thousands from their homes.
Unfortunately, these catastrophes are not unusual. In 2018 and 2019, California wildfires claimed more than 100 lives, destroyed nearly 26,000 buildings, and burned more than 2.2 million acres of land. These alarming figures serve as an urgent reminder of the annual threat that wildfires pose to our communities. According to Verisk’s 2020 Wildfire Risk Analysis, nearly 4.5 million homes in the U.S. are at high or extreme risk for wildfires, of which more than two million are in California.
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Record wildfires this year in California, Oregon, and Washington have been catastrophic, killing over 33 people and destroying millions of acres of forests. Huge swaths of the West have burned, leaving the sky in San Francisco looking like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, forcing the closure of National Parks and major freeways, and even causing hazy sunsets as far away as D.C. Dealing with these wildfires is dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming. And the political, financial, and legal hurdles associated with providing aid after wildfire devastation create additional challenges.
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