• WILDFIRESGames Can Promote Preparedness and Build Community Resilience to Wildfire

    By Emily Cerf

    If a wildfire causes an evacuation, people are forced to leave quickly and make decisions under pressure. These challenging decisions can have serious impacts on the outcome of a fire, and are what players confront in ‘Firewise Residents,’ one of three simulation games  created by University of California, Santa Cruz computational media researchers.

  • WILDEFIRESNIST Updates Critical Wildfire Evacuation and Sheltering Guidance

    Wildfires move fast. They can reduce communities to ash in a matter of hours. To save as many lives as possible, officials must have an evacuation and shelter plan in place before an actual wildfire threatens their community.

  • WILDFIRESThe Growing Challenge of Urban Wildfires

    By Sara Frueh

    The wildfires that burned in the Los Angeles area in January surged through highly populated areas, causing catastrophic damage. The two largest fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, together destroyed over 16,000 homes and other buildings, killed 29 people, and displaced thousands.

  • WILRDFIRESTrump’s Cuts to Federal Wildfire Crews Could Have “Scary” Consequences

    By Alex Brown

    President Donald Trump’s moves to slash the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of wildland firefighters and support personnel, fire professionals warn, leaving communities to face deadly consequences when big blazes arrive this summer. States, tribes and fire chiefs are preparing for a fire season with minimal federal support.

  • WILDFIRESClimate Change Primed LA to Burn — Catastrophically

    By Matt Simon

    A new analysis finds that human-caused warming helped dry out the vegetation that turned Los Angeles into a firestorm.

  • WILDFIRES5 Israeli Innovations for Fighting Wildfires

    By Zachy Hennessey

    As regions from California to the Mediterranean face wildfire threats, these innovations can help win the battle against out-of-control flames.

  • WILDFIRESThe L.A. Fires Show a Need to Rethink Our Wildland Firefighting Systems

    By Jay Balagna

    As bad as the fires in the Los Angeles area have been—more than 12,000 structures burned, about 180,000 people evacuated, more than 35,000 acres scorched, and at least 25 deaths—they could have been even worse, but in some ways Angelenos got lucky. Asystem built on luck, however, is not a durable system. It is already strained, and it risks breaking down in a world of greater and more frequent wildfires.

  • WILDFIRESWhat Mercenaries Can Teach Us About Climate-Fueled Disaster Responses

    By Isabelle Bond

    The devastating fires in Southern California, many of which are still burning out of control, have exposed a controversial and increasingly attractive disaster response alternative that engages the private sector.

  • WILDFIRESWhat Made the Los Angeles Wildfires So Monstrous

    By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and Matt Simon

    Powerful winds and extra-dry vegetation have fueled what may become the costliest wildfires on record. The longer-term challenge is better adapting Los Angeles, and the rest of California, to a future of ever-worsening droughts and wildfires. “People talk about adapting to the climate,” sys one expert. “We haven’t adapted to the climate we have, let alone the climate that’s coming.”

  • WILDEFIRESA Disaster Expert Explains Why the L.A. Fires Have Been So Catastrophic

    By Renée Cho

    As we’re seeing more and more disaster events, it raises questions about risk and whether insurers are going to keep insuring homes in the long run. Increasingly, it seems the answer is no.

  • CHEMICAL SPILLSAccidents Not Waiting to Happen

    By Marina Schauffler

    Fires are classified by the material ignited, and only Class A fires —involving wood, cloth, rubber and some plastics —respond well to water. Class A foam is typically used on structural fires because it penetrates into materials to quell flames quickly. But a recent firefighting foam spill points to a much larger problem Maine has ignored.

  • WILDFIRESSounding the Alarm: Fire's Speed Is More Threatening Than Its Size

    Most news reports about wildfires include the number of acres a given fire has burned, but according to a new study, these reports should also note how fast the fire is moving.

  • WILDFIRESEfforts to Build Wildfire Resilience Are Heating Up

    By Chelcey Adami

    Stanford’s campus has become a living lab for testing innovative fire management techniques, from AI-powered environmental sensors to a firebreak-creating “BurnBot.”

  • WILDFIRESCongressional Staff Learn to Fight Wildfires with Legislation

    By Rob Jordan

    Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment recently hosted a first-of-its-kind “boot camp” in which congressional staffers got a crash course from experts in climate, forestry, fire science, utilities, insurance, and other wildfire-related topics.

  • WILDFIRESAI Technology and Self-Coordinating Drones to Detect and Investigate Wildfires

    Engineers have developed a swarm of self-coordinating drones for firefighting, as part of an effort to develop cost-effective early mitigation strategies for wildfires.