Getting Fired up About Wildfire Resilience

Over the past decade, the growth in frequency, scale, and severity of wildfires have highlighted the seriousness of an emerging global problem, particularly in an area known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). These impacts are expected to worsen with ongoing development in wildfire-prone areas and extreme weather conditions from climate change. FEMA’s Building Science Disaster Support Program recently deployed a team of subject matter experts to Colorado after the devastating Marshall Fire and identified a need for more collaboration between the fields of planning and building science to increase wildfire resilience. In this session, a cross-disciplinary panel of experts from planning, hazard mitigation, building science, and fire science will discuss observations, recommendations and resources that planners can incorporate in their practice to reduce wildfire risk and improve resilience. The panel will address wildfire mitigation concepts at the parcel, neighborhood and community levels and the interrelationships between these scales. Panelists will draw on lessons learned and best practice examples that emphasize how planning, zoning and building codes as well as long-term maintenance programs can be effective tools in reducing community wildfire risk and advancing inclusive and equitable community planning for wildfire.

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