Fire researchers are highlighting the human role in wildfires

More than a thousand homeowners in Lewisville, Colorado know what it's like to lose a home to wildfire. It's not just a home, it was a life that I had before I was born. When I was born and everything after it, and it's all in one spot, and now it's all gone. And it's tough to leave a goal. And in the days after the December 2021 fire,

fire has consumed Hygira's professional life for 22 years, but he wanted to take a closer look at how humans are impacting fire trends in the West. Largely, we're seeing increasingly these negative human impacts of wildfires. Hygira's team had a hunch that wildfires were destroying homes at a higher rate in the last decade than in previous years. But by how much and what role did humans play,

they poured over data for more than 15,000 wildfires between 1999 and 2020. We focus a lot on that one statistic of how much area burns. And our hunch was that, you know, area burn doesn't tell the whole story. And in fact, can be misleading. The team took into account the number of acres burned and increased growth in the West with more people moving to the edge

of urban areas where wildland begins. Where development meets nature. But something shocked Phil in his team, the increase in structure loss is actually outpairing. He's increasing the increase in area burned and the increase in people. It's not just that fires are now burning into places where they have in the past and they're happen to be homes there. Or there are homes in places where fires used

to burn. It's, it's the combination of both. And the human component. The study found Western wildfires destroyed 246% more homes and buildings between 2010 and 2020 than the decade before. And as Hygaris says, the current wildfire crisis has human fingerprints all over it. About 76% of all the fires that end up resulting in some sort of home or structure loss. Those fires are started by us

either. I mean, in most cases by accident and either directly or indirectly through things like infrastructure. Power lines falling down backyard burning the cigarette, but chains dragging on the on the highway. The research also showed most of the destruction happened in the 2017, 2018 and 2020 wildfire seasons. And maybe not a surprise. California dominated the pattern of increased structure loss, making up 77% of the more

than 85,000 buildings destroyed. But Hygaris says the trends point to an increase in nearly all Western states. We would be misguided if we just thought of this as a California problem and didn't kind of see, look ahead on the radar and see. Many communities in many states are moving in that same direction. What might surprise you? 88% of the Western wildfires between 1999 and 2020 didn't

destroy any buildings. A majority of the area burned started with lightning and often in remote areas. That's what fire researchers call beneficial fire. It's part of why the Forest Service reversed a decades old full suppression strategy. It means understanding what's known as the fire paradox. The counterintuitive aspect is is all happening all the time with fire. If you have a fire problem in our wildlands, chances

are you need more fire in order to solve it, not less. Scripps News first introduced you to fire researcher Mark Finney last year when we took you inside this Mizzoula Fire Lab, the only one of its kind in the country. We don't have a choice about fire. We can't choose not to have fire. We've proven that. Every year we prove we do not have the power

to choose not to have it. The only power we have is when to have it and what kind to have. Experts agree solutions include prescribed burns to thin fuel in our forests, creating defensible spaces around homes and remembering the famous motto from our friend Smokey Bear. That includes more than just one person. It means communities making changes to how we build with more fire resistant material

and in spatial patterns that give firefighters safe access. It's also where we build in places that minimize the chances of unintentional fires like in your power lines. Hygurus says if nothing changes, two things guarantee these trends will keep rising. One, climate change, the other, human behavior as we continue expanding in the West. It's relatively easy to play this out in the future. Our hope is that

by sharing this information, we can pull some levers that will change the relationships that we've uncovered and see over the past 20 years so that the next 20 years don't have all the same factors influencing things. New research with clear actions we can all take now to reduce the likelihood of another disaster like this one. Marita Giorgio, Scripps News, Mizzou Le Montan.