Wildfire threat a $500 billion risk in 13 Western US States alone
In 13 Western US states there are 1.8 million single-family homes designated as having extreme or high risk of wildfire damage, representing a combined total reconstruction cost value (RCV) of almost $500 billion, according to data from CoreLogic.
The data suggests that a further 27 million properties, with an estimated (RCV) of $6.7 trillion, fall into the moderate or low risk category.
CoreLogic’s analysis of wildfire risk designates risk levels as extreme, high, moderate and low based on a numeric risk score ranging from 1 to 100 assigned to individual properties.
The score reflects the level of susceptibility to wildfire, as well as the risk associated with the property being located in close proximity to adjacent high-risk properties or areas.
CoreLogic said the proximity designation is important since wildfire can easily expand to surrounding properties and cause significant damage even if the original property was not considered high risk.
California and Texas rank first and second in the extreme wildfire risk category, due to a large number of residential properties in these states combined with the proximity of high-risk vegetation and terrain.
California topped the list for both high and extreme categories with 645,445 properties at risk, followed by Texas (532,317) and Colorado (195,601). The state also had the highest RCV in each of the top two risk levels at more than $250 billion, followed by Texas and Colorado at almost $94 billion and $54 billion, respectively.
