Colorado study: 300,000 US buildings a year at risk from wildfire by 2060

Wildfire risk to American buildings is spreading east, and the communities in its path are the ones least equipped to absorb the damage.

That is the central finding of a study published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. The team combined climate models with land-use patterns to reconstruct fire risk to structures from 1945 to 2023 and project it through 2060 across the contiguous United States.

Under business-as-usual conditions with no adaptation, structural losses are projected to nearly triple nationwide by mid-century. The study estimates that 133,200 to 449,100 buildings could be damaged or destroyed, with an average of about 300,000.

The West remains the epicenter. There, 30 percent of census tracts projected to face the highest fire risk intersect with socioeconomic hardship — meaning the heaviest losses may fall on communities with the fewest resources to rebuild.

But the map is shifting. Some of the sharpest increases in risk are expected in the central and eastern United States, where communities are less prepared for catastrophic fires.

The recent past offers a preview. In June, Colorado's Aspen Acres Fire destroyed hundreds of structures. In July, four firefighters died from injuries suffered when the Knowles Fire overtook them near the Colorado–Utah border. In August, wind-driven fires in Spokane, Washington, damaged more than 800 homes.

Virginia Iglesias, director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder and the paper's lead author, called the findings "a call to action." She noted that doing nothing is always an option — and the study shows what happens if that option is chosen.

The research also points to a narrowing window for intervention. Strategies to lower the risk of losing a home to wildfire do not have to be overly expensive, the researchers found.

What the evidence does establish is that the geography of wildfire risk is changing, and the places least ready for it may also be the places least able to recover.