Economic costs of U.S. wildfires: A meta-analysis

Wildfires in the U.S. are increasing in size, severity, and frequency, leading to a wildfire crisis where at-risk communities are experiencing rapidly escalating wildfire damages. The wildfire crisis necessitates adapting to evolving natural disasters and implementing efforts to mitigate the economic costs of wildfire. Better understanding of the type and magnitude of economic costs, along with trends over time, can provide valuable information for avoiding or reducing wildfire damages. The research presented herein comprises two critical first steps of this larger research agenda. First, we performed a thorough review of published wildfire cost studies and used the results to develop a comprehensive wildfire cost categorization structure. The literature review bore costs from 29 individual wildfires, almost all with multiple types of costs (yielding 131 individual wildfire costs in total). Using the categorization structure, we classified the 131 wildfire costs into nine categories: Suppression, Evacuation, Structures & Contents, Structure-Related, Infrastructure, Mortality & Morbidity, Market Impacts, Ecosystem Services, and Rehabilitation. Second, we used multilevel modeling techniques to conduct a meta-analysis of the documented wildfire costs. We found that wildfire cost categories contribute to total costs at different rates, with economic costs being greatest for Structures & Contents (37%), Suppression (22%), and Ecosystem Service costs (18%). Our results show that wildfire costs have been increasing over the last two decades and human-ignitions are contributing to greater costs. Post-wildfire flooding costs, when present, represent a secondary natural disaster and tend to be greater than wildfire costs themselves. Overall, wildfire costs are infrequently and poorly documented, leading to deficient understanding of wildfire cost components.