There are three ingredients needed for fire: fuel to burn, hot & dry conditions, and an ignition source. People are changing all three. The area burned has increased over just the past several decades, in western U.S. forests by 1500%. Last year was the most expensive wildfire season ever in the U.S., costing $18 Billion. We need to learn to live with fire, again. But how?
As wildfires increase in size and severity, the costs to protect homes and lives similarly rise. Yet protecting communities represents a relatively small portion of the total costs of a wildfire—other short- and long-term impacts yield a variety of costs that often go unrecognized.
The WiRē (Wildfire Research) Team has worked with many communities to help them better understand their residents' relationships with wildfire risk.
Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, during wildland fire management assignments across the U.S. each year. In this webinar, Kathleen Navarro, PhD, will present on a recent Joint Fire Science Program study estimating the lifetime risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease from exposure to particulate matter (PM) from smoke.