Dousing Wildfire Risk

Structural losses due to wildfire numbered in the thousands in 2011, making it an expensive year for the insurance industry. Fire science researchers and climatologists predict extreme fire behaviour will become more common, with correlated increases in home losses as the climate changes and warms.  So how should the insurance industry respond?

Two strategies are available to the industry for reducing claims (losses). One focuses on increasing the survivability of homes and structures in the interface between wildland and urban areas. The second focuses on reducing the intensity and severity of fires approaching the interface.

Individual Homeowner’s Responsibility

Regarding the first strategy, the insurance industry has actively promoted policies that improve home survivability. The second strategy provides opportunity for the insurance industry to take a more aggressive role in advocating actions and policies to reduce claims.

Homes are lost to wildfire because of direct flame or ember contact on a flammable surface. Strategies to prevent this process focus on reducing the flammability of the vegetation surrounding the home and reducing the flammability of structural materials. Post-wildfire forensic audits often support the success of these remediation activities. Many homes surviving fire are constructed using inflammable building materials and design features that make the home impermeable to embers, while adjacent landscaping is treated so as not to support combustion or fire spread.

Programs such as Partners in Protection, FireSmart and Firewise presume that fire protection in the wildland-urban-interface (WUI) is first and foremost the responsibility of homeowners. If a person wishes to live in the interface and follows these program guidelines, the chances of his or her home and property surviving a wildfire will be greatly improved.

The reliance on placing sole responsibility for fire protection on the homeowner will not be successful in the long run. The success of these programs relies on participants buying into the concept, paying for the necessary improvements to their homes and property and, more importantly, maintaining their homes and property over time. A number of key economic and social factors are likely to confound this strategy.

After major interface fires involving significant home losses, ensuing forensic studies typically reveal additional vulnerabilities associated with home design or materials. Most recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology dispelled a number of key myths involving building materials once thought to be fireproof, such as the influence of ember size, the size of wire mesh on external vent covers and the ignitability of ceramic tile.1 Unfortunately, building and maintaining a truly fireproof home is an ongoing process that likely involves costs exceeding what the average homeowner can afford to pay.  At a British Columbia Fire Chiefs convention in 2007, participants were asked to predict the long-term success rate of home and property fire remediation efforts. They predicted 10%. Now that we are enmeshed in a long and painful economic downturn, success of these remediation programs is placed further in doubt.

In addition, by focusing on the efforts of individual homeowners, we ignore and discount the value of the landscape surrounding our communities. For example, we ought to be giving thought to the importance of domestic watersheds, energy infrastructure, public investments in resources (forest plantations), etc. A truly impoverished community is one that survives a large wildfire, but is surrounded by a charred landscape and faced with the loss of its domestic water supply. This situation would result in substantial long-term environmental, economic and social upheaval.

Landscape-scale Fuel Modification

By relying too heavily on homeowner initiative, we miss an opportunity to make greater gains in home protection through more aggressive and widespread landscape fuel modifications. These modifications involve thinning of trees and removal of surface fuels, starting from the homes at the edge of the community and working outward.  Recent analysis of two 2011 wildfires – the Wallow Fire in Arizona and the Fourmile Canyon Fire in Colorado – suggest that fuel treatments, assuming they are properly designed, carried out and maintained, result in a significant reduction of home losses.

This is achieved in large measure by reducing fire intensity and providing a safer and ultimately more successful work environment for firefighters. However, fuel modification at the scale necessary for North America has languished, mostly due to cost. When fuel modification has been applied and subsequently put to the test in a wildfire, experts generally agree the treatments were too small in scale. Why?

The answer is quite simple: the forests surrounding our communities in fire-prone ecosystems contain large numbers of low-value trees. In British Columbia, there have been efforts to treat more than 1.8-million hectares of these forests since the highly destructive 2003 fire season. The efforts have stalled, in part due to treatment costs that range between $1,500 and $20,000 per hectare. The cost is a significant factor in the landscape-scale fuel modification strategy. As with the home protection strategy, the long-term success of the approach is tied to maintenance of a low-hazard state after the initial hazard abatement work has been completed.

Landscape-scale fuel modification, even when it involves large numbers of low-value trees, can be economical if the material removed is directed toward the emerging bioenergy sector. In a recent report, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that U.S. federal lands within the WUI – typically defined as between half a mile and 1 mile from settlement – contain more than 9 billion tons of material that could be used to produce a number of bioenergy products. Examples of such products include bio-coal, bio-diesel and even wood pellets. Markets for such materials are emerging rapidly as countries try to wean themselves off fossil fuels and nuclear energy.

British Columbia’s forest policies stand in the way of making this material more readily available for market. But instead of amending the impeding policy, the province has chosen instead to take the path of least resistance. This means advocating for personal responsibility and providing an inadequate and inconsistent amount of public funds to subsidize fuel treatment.

Reducing insurance losses related to wildfire will ultimately depend on a combination of two strategies – homeowner participation in home structure protection programs and landscape-scale fuel modification. During difficult economic times, relying too heavily on homeowners to solve the problem is likely to be unsuccessful. Large-scale fuel modification and maintenance has proven to be a successful strategy and can occur even during an economic downturn.

In Australia, the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission, which investigated the wildfires around Melborne that resulted in 179 fatalities, strongly endorsed landscape-scale fuel treatments in order to reduce the likelihood of a repeated disaster. Other post-wildfire government-commissioned reports have come up with similar conclusions.

Here in Canada, exploitation of an entirely new industrial sector such as bio-energy can help to promote and sustain fire hazard abatement around communities. This in turn can ultimately reduce losses in the insurance industry. Better combining home protection programs with landscape-scale fuel modification and maintenance will lower the claims for structural damage, which translates into lower premiums for the homeowner. In short, it’s a two-edged strategy that ensures everyone will win.

1 www.newswise.com/articles/view/ 581628?print-article