The past month has offered a stark reminder that fire season is underway. States across the country, including Washington, Alaska, Florida, Utah, and Arizona face numerous active, destructive, and life-threatening wildfires impacting both rural and urban communities. These fires destroy homes, businesses, and infrastructure, while also creating poor air quality that has lasting effects on public health. Together, these impacts contribute to billions of dollars in disaster costs each year.
While a spark, either human-caused or from lightning strikes, is necessary to start a fire, optimal fire conditions are often months, if not years, in the making. Increasingly dangerous wildfire conditions are a result of various shifts in climate and weather patterns. Higher temperatures and ongoing drought dry out the land and vegetation, making it easier for fires to start and spread more quickly. Patterns in our climate, like this year’s El Niño, may result in less rainfall and longer periods of heat and drought in some regions, priming vegetation to act as wildfire fuel.
As fires are becoming more frequent and intense under these new conditions, a greater number of communities are facing the impacts. As of today, the U.S. has seen over 3.3 million acres burned by wildfires since January 1st—in the last decade, only one year (2022 at 4.6 million acres) exceeded this acreage by mid-summer. And wildfire impacts often extend far beyond the burn area: smoke can travel long distances, even as far as across coasts, like when wildfires in western Canada led to poor air quality in New York City in 2023. Impacts from wildfires include:
- Health problems, such as respiratory and cardiovascular issues, because of the particulate matter present in wildfire smoke
Because of this range of impacts, wildfires pose different threats to different communities. While regions like Colorado’s North Front Range and South Central Texas face direct risk of fires damaging homes, businesses, land, and infrastructure, communities in Washington’s South-Central Puget Sound, generally less fire-prone, are primarily concerned with the lasting public health impacts of smoke events that can travel from fires all over the Olympic Peninsula.
Although wildfire challenges vary by region, their impacts are widespread and often interconnected. Wildfires and wildfire smoke don’t hesitate to cross geopolitical boundaries, requiring collaborative solutions that bring together practitioners both within and across regions. Through our Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator, C2ES works with regional leaders to identify and advance solutions that are tailored to benefit their communities and economies. The Accelerator supports coordination between public and private sectors to ensure resilience strategies that have strong, lasting impacts.
See the South-Central Puget Sound Accelerator’s recently published Regional Action Roadmap for Extreme Heat and Wildfire Smoke which outlines 11 strategies across six key action areas for building cross-sector resilience to heat and smoke.
In addition to regional-level coordination, wildfire resilience requires collaboration and preparation at multiple scales, including both locally and nationally.
Locally, municipal governments help residents prepare for wildfire risks by issuing fire warnings based on real-time data and communicating when conditions are dangerous. When there is high fire risk, local governments recommend that their communities avoid burning or using equipment that can create sparks. Local leaders also support preparedness through public education campaigns, emergency planning, and programs that help protect public health when there are smoke events.
At the federal level, members of the 119th Congress are demonstrating how to collaborate on wildfire resilience as well. Several bills, including the Cross-Boundary Wildfire Solutions Act (H.R. 3922 / S. 2033) and the Fix Our Forests Act (H.R. 471), aim to simplify cross-jurisdictional wildfire mitigation efforts and strengthen forest management. Broadly supported bipartisan efforts like these will improve how the U.S. reduces fire risk while helping communities better prepare for potential impacts. Federal agencies also play a critical role in providing timely, accessible information that aids the public before, during, and after wildfire events. Resources such as AirNow.gov/wildfires allow communities to track wildfire smoke and air quality conditions while providing critical information for preparedness and response.
Last year, C2ES convened regional leaders from the Colorado Accelerator cohort and national experts to develop five federal policy goals for strengthening national wildfire resilience and mitigation. Among these, a focus on Healthy Lands highlighted the need for federal action that supports a cross-boundary approach to land management—bringing private, local, state, Tribal, and federal partners together to improve forest health, reduce wildfire risk, protect critical infrastructure, and safeguard public health.
Current wildfire activity is putting those policy goals into sharp relief. In Utah, two different fires battle to become the largest active wildfire in the country, both nearing the 100,000-acre mark and one destroying more than 150 structures, while smoke and fire impacts across the West continue to reach communities far from the flames. At the same time, fires burning across Colorado and Utah are crossing land ownership and jurisdictional lines, underscoring a central challenge for wildfire policy: risk does not stop at a boundary. Effective resilience planning must be just as expansive, bringing federal, state, Tribal, local, and private-sector partners together to protect landscapes, communities, and public investments.
