Western fires burning through $3 billion annually

The West’s wildfire season holds the high risk of again being long, expensive, and dangerous, with an acceleration of alarming trends that include more and bigger fires, and increased dangers and costs associated with the need to defend private homes. Unfortunately, what we have tried so far is not adequate to prepare for these developments. Already, wildland firefighting costs the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management an average of $3 billion per year; triple the amount from a decade ago. At least a third of the bill goes to defend private homes. In the last 10 years, the acres burned per fire doubled and the average fire burns twice as long. Since 2010, and the number of structures destroyed tripled and firefighter fatalities rose fourfold. These trends will worsen because of climate change and continued home building on fire-prone lands. The fire season is on average two months longer since the 1970s...more

Some interesting stats, but the rest is the same old bunk about global warming, the wildland-urban interface, taxing local government and the feds "helping" with local land use planning.  Should have known, its written by the head of Headwaters Economics, the enviros favorite economists-for-hire firm.