Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are important components of community wildfire readiness. This report describes the data collected through two efforts conducted in the Cooper Landing, Alaska, study area: (1) parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments performed by trained assessors and (2) homeowner surveys in which respondents provided self-assessments of their parcel-level wildfire risk. This project was undertaken to support the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management and Cooper Landing Emergency Services to inform decisions about wildfire adaptation. The household surveys explored the social dimensions of wildfire, including understanding of wildfire risk, outreach or communication preferences, mitigation and evacuation preparedness activities, and perceptions of community risk reduction strategies. Overall, the study indicated a community that was engaged in preparing for and mitigating the risk of wildfire yet had more that could be done to reduce its risk.

Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are important components of community wildfire readiness. This report describes the data collected through two efforts conducted in the Nikiski, Alaska, study area: (1) parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments performed by trained assessors and (2) homeowner surveys in which respondents provided self-assessments of their parcel-level wildfire risk. This project was undertaken to support the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management, and the Nikiski Fire Service Area to inform decisions about wildfire adaptation. The household surveys explored the social dimensions of wildfire, including understanding of wildfire risk, outreach or communication preferences, mitigation and evacuation preparedness activities, and perceptions of community risk reduction strategies. The results provide evidence that despite some results seeming to suggest lower wildfire risk perceptions, respondents indicate taking action to reduce risk on their properties, support fuels management on adjacent public lands, and express interest in opportunities to undertake both mitigation and emergency preparedness activities to reduce risks associated with the threat of wildfire.

Community wildfire readiness includes homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and wildfire evacuation preparedness. This report presents results from a household survey distributed to homeowners in the study area around Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2024 which was a follow-up to a previous survey of homeowners of the same residences, consisting of mostly identical questions, that was conducted in 2021. This follow-up survey was motivated by the nearby 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. Comparison of results indicates general stability in the aggregated responses to most survey questions. As found previously, 2024 results indicate that Santa Fe survey respondents are engaged in preparing for wildfire, yet more could be done to reduce risk in study communities. Despite decreases between 2021 and 2024 in the acceptability of fuels treatment methods that concern the use of fire, respondents generally support multiple types of programs intended to reduce wildfire risk to the city, including most but not all types of fuels treatments on public lands.

Wildfire risk mitigation on private property is central to reducing community wildfire vulnerability. Homeowners have control over many of the key factors that contribute to wildfire risk on their parcels, yet vulnerable conditions persist. One potential explanation is a misalignment between homeowners' and trained assessors' perceptions of parcel-level wildfire risk. Prior research has documented a "risk gap" in a single community wherein owners often underestimate their parcel-level wildfire risk; however, it is unclear whether such misalignments are widespread. This study replicates and expands previous research by examining the parcel-level wildfire risk gap in 38 wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities across the Western United States using paired data from household surveys and parcel-level wildfire risk assessments by trained assessors. We find that homeowners and assessors often perceive parcel characteristics differently. Homeowners may systematically mis-weight their importance, tending to underweight key controllable factors such as building materials and defensible space, leading to meaningful divergence from trained assessor ratings. Accordingly, we also find that homeowners generally underestimate overall parcel wildfire risk compared to trained assessors. These results suggest that even when homeowners recognize attributes on their parcels that contribute to wildfire risk, they may not fully grasp how much the attributes contribute to overall parcel risk, potentially failing to recognize the need to undertake meaningful mitigation actions. The findings from this study contribute to the broader natural hazards literature on expert-layperson risk perception gaps and offer insights for improving wildfire communication, education, and mitigation strategies in WUI communities.

Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are important components of community wildfire readiness. This report describes the data collected through two efforts conducted in the Lake County, Colorado, study area: (1) parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments performed by trained assessors and (2) homeowner surveys in which respondents provided self-assessments of their parcel-level wildfire risk. This project was undertaken to support Colorado State Forest Service Salida Field Office and Leadville/Lake County Fire-Rescue. The household surveys explored the social dimensions of wildfire, including understanding of wildfire risk, outreach or communication preferences, mitigation and evacuation preparedness activities, and perceptions of community risk reduction strategies. Overall, the study results detail a community that was engaged in preparing for and mitigating the risk of wildfire while revealing more that could be done to reduce risk.

Fuels treatments intended to reduce fuel loads and improve forest health on public lands offer one way to reduce wildfire hazards in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where the natural and built environments meet. However, for fuels treatment implementation to be successful, it must comply with regulatory and scientific standards and be supported by local communities, as lack of acceptance can lead to alterations, delays, or abandonment. To foster support, public land managers can engage directly with residents in communities near treatment areas through various communication channels or engage indirectly through trusted local partners. This research uses paired household survey and observed parcel-level wildfire risk assessment data to investigate wildfire risk information sources' role in the acceptability of fuels treatment approaches on public lands near select WUI communities in the Western United States. We find that information deemed useful from sources is often positively correlated with acceptability, while information deemed not useful is sometimes negatively correlated. Local sources of information tend to be widely received, perceived as useful, and have positive correlations with acceptability, while nonlocal sources vary in their receipt, perceived usefulness, and correlations with acceptability. Public land managers, particularly those from national organizations, may benefit from leveraging and aligning messaging with trusted local partners. Developing fuels treatment plans that consider existing local sentiments may facilitate public trust in managers and acceptability of treatments.

As the realized experiences of wildfires threatening communities increase, the importance of proactive evacuation preparation and wildfire risk mitigation on private property to reduce the loss of lives and property is shaping wildfire policy and programs. To date, research has focused on pre-wildfire evacuation preparation and risk mitigation independently. This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity of these proactive risk-reducing actions. If mitigation and evacuation preparedness are substitutes, wildfire education programs may take a life-over-property approach. However, if proactive risk-reducing efforts are complements, wildfire education programs can confidently encourage residents to prepare for evacuation while also mitigating wildfire risk on their properties. This complementarity may also demonstrate that poorly mitigated households are less prepared to evacuate, compounding their risks. Using household survey data from 25 wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities across five Western states, we explore how wildfire risk mitigation actions affect evacuation preparedness. We find that improving household wildfire mitigation is associated with an improvement in wildfire evacuation preparedness. This complementary relationship between wildfire mitigation and evacuation preparedness actions highlights the potential benefits of a wildfire education approach that encourages residents to simultaneously prepare for evacuation and reduce wildfire risk on their properties before they are threatened by a wildfire.

Public agencies and organizations often deliver financial assistance through cost sharing, in which recipients contribute some portion toward total costs. However, cost sharing might raise equity concerns if it reduces participation among populations with lower incomes. Here, we revisit a past study using a richer dataset (n=1,689) to assess whether stated income levels affect survey respondents' willingness to participate in a cost share program for vegetation reduction to mitigate wildfire risk in western Colorado. Results show that residents with lower incomes are less likely to participate even though they can choose to contribute 0% toward a cost share. Residents reporting incomes less than $50,000 are 11 percentage points less likely to participate than those reporting incomes of $200,000 or more. They also are willing to pay a lower share (26 percentage points less) if they do participate. Results indicate potential economic equity concerns from the use of such programs.

Genesee Fire Protection District (GFPD) and members of the Board contacted the Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) early in 2021.GFPD serves a community of approximately 1,500 homes and 3,600 residents.The community borders the south side of I-70 and runs south up varied topography with varied vegetation to approximately 8,000 feet of elevation and is considered to be at extremely high risk of wildfire.In 2020, GFPD worked with the Forest Stewards Guild to update their Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP).GFPD and WiRē collaborated to collect household-level data in an effort that is complementary to the insights provided by the CWPP.A series of scoping meetings that included the GFR Fire Board helped to build a shared understanding of GFPD's goals, the setting, and the community.

Wildfire affects many types of communities and is a particular concern for communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI), such as those of Teton County, Wyoming.The core intent of this project was to provide evidence to support the Teton Area Wildfire Protection Coalition (TAWPC) and affiliated organizations in their wildfire mitigation and education programming.This report analyzes existing wildfire risk data collected in fall 2020 and pairs it with social data collected in the winter and spring of 2021, in order to better understand residents' knowledge, experiences, and perceptions about wildfire risk.This greater understanding will help TAWPC focus its programs and outreach and ultimately promote increased mitigation and reduced wildfire risk in Teton County.The results of the wildfire risk assessment, covering 725 private residential properties in the study area, suggest that 89% face high, very high, or extreme risk of wildfire.In comparison, only 41% of residents estimated their risk of wildfire to be high, very high, or extreme (fig.2).This suggests a "gap" between rapid assessment and survey estimates.Contributing to the risk assessment gap is the defensible space attribute.Most survey respondents (74%) thought they had at least 30 feet of defensible space, whereas rapid assessment estimated only 40% of properties to have more than 30 feet of defensible space.Furthermore, only 4% of survey respondents estimated their defensible space as less than 5 feet, while the rapid assessment placed 30% of properties in that category (fig.10).

In this study we illustrate the value of social data compiled at the community scale to guide a local wildfire mitigation and education effort. The four contiguous fire-prone study communities in North Central Washington, US, fall within the same jurisdictional fire service boundary and within one US census block group. Across the four communities, similar attitudes toward wildfire were observed. However, significant differences were found on the measures critical to tailoring wildfire preparation and mitigation programs to the local context such as risk mitigation behaviors, reported barriers to mitigation, and communication preferences across the four communities.

Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties. Here, we describe the WiRē Rapid Assessment (RA), a parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessment tool designed to evaluate PLR with a small set of measures for all homes in a community. We investigate the relationship between 2019 WiRē RA data collected in the Columbine Lake community in Grand County, Colorado, and whether assessed homes were destroyed in the 2020 East Troublesome Fire. We find that the overall parcel-level risk scores, as well as many individual attributes, relate to the chance that a home was destroyed. We also find strong evidence of risk spillovers across neighboring properties. The results demonstrate that even coarsely measured RA data capture meaningful differences in wildfire risk across a community. The findings also demonstrate the importance of accounting for multiple aspects of PLR, including both hazards and susceptibility, when assessing the risk of wildfire to homes and communities. Finally, the results underscore that relatively small actions by residents before a fire can influence wildfire outcomes.

Donovan, Colleen; Gomez, Jamie P.; Falk, Lilia; Barth, Christopher M.; Champ, Patricia A.; Brenkert-Smith, Hannah; Meldrum, James R.; Wagner, Carolyn. 2022. Living with wildfire in Log Hill Mesa, Ouray County, Colorado: 2017 data report and a comparison to 2011 and 2012 data. Res. Note RMRS-RN-91. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 45 p. https://doi.org/10.2737/RMRSRN-91.

Private landowners are important actors in landscape-level wildfire risk management. Accordingly, wildfire programs and policy encourage wildland–urban interface homeowners to engage with local organizations to properly mitigate wildfire risk on their parcels. We investigate whether parcel-level wildfire risk assessment data, commonly used to inform community-level planning and resource allocation, can be used to “nudge” homeowners to engage further with a regional wildfire organization. We sent 4564 households in western Colorado a letter that included varying combinations of risk information about their community, their parcels, and their neighbors’ parcels, and we measured follow-up visits to a personalized “Web site”. We find that the effect of providing parcel-specific information depends on baseline conditions: Informing homeowners about their property’s wildfire risk increases information-seeking among homeowners of the highest-risk parcels by about 5 percentage points and reduces information-seeking among homeowners of lower-risk parcels by about 6 percentage points. Parcel-specific information also increases the overall response in the lowest risk communities by more than 10 percentage points. Further, we find evidence of a 6-percentage point increase in response rate associated with receiving a social comparison treatment that signals neighboring properties as being either low or moderate risk on average. These results, especially considered against the 13 percent overall average response rate, offer causal evidence that providing parcel-specific wildfire risk information can influence behavior. As such, we demonstrate the effectiveness of simple outreach in engaging wildland–urban interface homeowners with wildfire risk professionals in ways that leverage existing data.