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BloombergBusinessweek November16, 2020Dave Sapsis went to bed onSunday,
Aug. 16, with a sense of foreboding.
As the head of risk mapping at the
California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection, he’d seen the read-
outs from the agency’s high-precision
weather forecasting system showing
broad bands of clouds that could pro-
duce lightning without rain. After a wet
spring, the state had spent the sum-
mer months baking under record-high
temperatures, turning all those spring
shoots into dry tinder.
Sapsis has been studying California
wildfires for three decades. He knew
what was coming next.
By the next morning, more than
900 separate fires were burning; these
and the ones that followed have so far
consumed 4.2 million acres, a record
even in fire-prone California. As much
land area has been scorched this year as
in the past three years combined.
That’s not what disturbed Sapsis’
sleep. His primary responsibility is to
anticipate how fires will affect peo-
ple and property, and in that dimen-
sion at least, 2020’s fires have failed
to break records. As of the first week
in November, the fires had destroyed
10,500 structures, far fewer than the
23,000 lost in 2018.
No, what kept Sapsis up that night
were the maps. For the past two years,
he’s been working on a new model to
determine which California homes sit
in severe fire hazard zones. The rapid
progression of climate change has made
it difficult to finish—when conditions
change, the model has to change, too,
or it will be outdated before it’s even
released. The lightning strikes meant
more delays. “Dry lightning should be
a pretty rare occurrence,” he says. “But
from this fire season, I realized that we
really need to understand the likelihood
of such storms and how they fit into fire
risk going forward.”
A severe hazard zone for fires is sim-
ilar to a severe hazard zone for floods.
The government draws the boundaries,
and any new developments within them
are required to submit to unforgiving
building codes and are subject to steep
risk-based increases to their insurancepremiums.Thisis thekindofthingthat
determineswherepeople try to build
and live, much more so than even the
most dire—yet still somehow abstract—
long-term projections of global warming.
The last time Cal Fire created a map
delineating areas of severe fire risk was
in 2007. Since then, California has expe-
rienced 15 of the 20 most damaging fires
in its history, including five this year
alone. Moreover, wildfires before 2007
mostlyaffectedforest,opengrasslands,
andthefewhousesthatstoodattheedge
ofwhatforesterscallthewildland-urban
interface. Recent fires have encroached
on territory once thought to be safe,
razing suburban block after suburban
block. “No one imagined urban fires of
this magnitude after the era of kerosene
lamps,”Sapsissays.
There are 2.2 million California
homes in the government-labeled
severe fire hazard zones. Sapsis won’t
say how many more are set to join
them, but he will say the number is
“likely very substantial.” He’s cautious
because he knows that, despite the ris-
ing peril, being in the zone is an expen-
sive burden, and the new designees are
liable to push back—hard.Climate change is making wildfires
more extreme. Scientifically, that argu-
ment is settled. Researchers have shown
that human-induced temperature and
humiditychangesinthefirstdecade-
and-a-halfofthe21stcenturyledtoa
75%increaseinWesternforestarea
withhighpotentialforfires.From 1984
to2015,thelandarealosttoforestfires
almostdoubled.Humanineptitudemay
bepartiallyresponsibleasoverzealous
fire-suppression practiceshave left
much,muchmorefueltoburn.Butthat
alonewouldn’texplainthedifference.
FireseasonintheWesternU.S.is now
morethantwomonthslongerthanit
wasinthe1970sand’80s;temperatures
arehigher,summersaredrier,spring
arrivesearlier,andfallcomeslater.
Andyet,wildfireshavealwaysbeen
a featureoftheAmericanWest,and
businesses and bureaucrats failed
totake notice of the growing risk.
They saw it finally on Nov. 8,2018, when faulty transmission lines
owned by Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
sparked a firestorm in desiccated
Northern California. Known as the
Camp Fire, it burned for 17 days, rav-
aging 153,000 acres and razing almost
19,000 buildings before the rain finally
put it out. Eighty-five people died.
The financial fallout was unprec-
edented. From 1964 to 1990, the
American insurance industry paid less
than $100 million a year toward wild-
fire losses, on average. In the next two
decades, that figure jumped to an aver-
age $600 million annually. From 2011 to
2018,it wasalmost$4billiona year.
The Camp Fire alone caused
$18billion in property damage,$9billion⊲ Sapsis
THE NEW ECONOMY