In January 2025, a series of fires in the Los Angeles area burned 40,000 acres, destroyed or damaged more than 12,000 structures, killed more than two dozen people, and displaced more than 200,000. The damage from the fires could cost insurance companies more than $20 billion and depress the economy by $50 billion, making this series of fires the most expensive in American history.
Wildfires have been growing more common and more destructive, damaging cities, endangering lives, and raising the cost of home insurance. On January 21, 2025, the UW Now Livestream hosted a conversation about wildfires — their causes, their costs, and ways to mitigate their damage. The Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association’s Mike Knetter hosted several Badger experts, including Paul Zedler MS’66, PhD’68, a professor emeritus of environmental studies; Ben Wright ’02, the chief underwriting officer for American Family Insurance; and Jonathan Patz, professor and John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment and former director of the UW’s Global Health Institute.
Zedler described the role of fire in ecology, noting that drought-stricken regions often experience fires. However, there are things that people can do to reduce the likelihood that fires would cause widespread damage. He talked about the “fire behavior triangle,” the three factors that determine how a fire will spread.
“Some of you may be familiar with the fire triangle, which is oxygen, heat, and fuel. Well, this one is weather, topography, and fuel,” he said. “What we can manipulate is the fuel. A lot of attention and management action is directed at [reducing available inflammable material] because if there’s no fuel, there’ll be no fire.”
Wright listed the ways that the increase in fire danger has made it more difficult for companies to insure homes.
“The frequency and severity of these events continues leading to a rapid increase in insured losses,” he said. “For much of the western U.S., projections show that an average temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit would increase the median burned area per year by as much as 600 percent in some types of forests. … Prices have had to increase to account for that increased risk.”
Patz, who was one of the authors for the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, listed the ways that a warming world is increasing the risk and human cost of fires.
“Climate change has doubled the risk of wildfires,” he said, “and in fact, human-caused climate change is responsible for over half of the observed increase in fires in the western U.S. in the last few decades.” He listed the health effects of these fires, noting that “wildfire smoke is 10 times more dangerous to children, especially children zero to five years of age [than to adults].”
Knetter brought forward questions from viewers, and each of the guests said that Americans will have to adapt to an increased threat from fire.
“We‘ve observed over $55 billion in losses associated with wildfires over the past decade. That figure excludes the events of this month and is nearly 20 times higher than in the 10 years prior,” Wright said. “However, continued advancements in our understanding of wildfires, how to mitigate their effects through improvements in building methods and materials as well as stronger partnerships between government officials, academics, and insurers ultimately can help alleviate these pressures.”