NFPA Journal - Summer 2023 - 37

in their work. It's my opinion that until and unless
our communities become prepared to live with wildfire-what's
known as being fire-adapted-our fire
service will never be successful in saving property,
and our land managers will never be able to properly
manage forests and rangelands. I also believe that the
massive property losses-the ones that can add up
to tens of billions of dollars in a single incident, year
after year-are the major motivators for members of
Congress to finally push for substantive change. The
commission's recommendations must and will overlap,
since we can't solve a single piece of this complex
problem without addressing it comprehensively.
'SUDDEN AND
SIGNIFICANT INTEREST'
NFPA's launch of Outthink Wildfire at the beginning
of 2021 could not have been timelier. California, Colorado,
and Oregon were emerging from some of the
worst wildfire disasters in their history, and bills
and proposals to address the wildfire problem had
begun piling up in state legislatures.
As we promoted Outthink, we scrambled to keep
up with the sudden and significant interest in an
array of wildfire-related issues. California's insurance
commissioner held hearings about wildfire risk and
initiated moratoriums on insurance cancellations for
companies doing business in the state. Oregon's fire
and building code officials contemplated whether
and how to allow rebuilding in the wake of a series
of destructive wildfires. Colorado was reeling from
a number of damaging events, including the Cameron
Peak and East Troublesome fires. Then, in the
final days of 2021, the Marshall Fire roared across
Colorado's Boulder County, savaging an area that
was on nobody's radar for wildfire-caused mass
destruction. The fire destroyed nearly 1,100 homes
over the course of two days and underscored the
realities that wildfire could strike almost anywhere
at any time, facts that further emphasized the need
for new policy approaches to wildfire and for a new
level of urgency with which to pursue those policies.
Several of the presentations I made in 2021 and
2022 were to college students. Over the previous
several years, I had built a modest reputation for
providing useful information during mildly entertaining
live and virtual presentations to classrooms
led by friends who taught at MIT, the University of
North Carolina, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and
elsewhere. For years, I had been demonstrating the
policy context at the federal level-including the old
" 10 a.m. " fire suppression policy, the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act of 2003, and the National Cohesive
Wildland Fire Management Strategy born out of the
FLAME Act of 2009-and pointing out the critically
important elements that were missing. Across the
country, local land use planning rarely accounts
for wildfire risk. Only two states and a handful of
municipalities use and enforce some kind of wildfire
safety standard for new construction. There are
almost no incentives or preventive measures to help
limit construction in high-hazard areas. I did what I
could to impress upon the students the folly and shortsightedness
of these gaps and absences, and to coax
them to share my indignation and passion for change.
With the advent of Outthink Wildfire, though, my
slide deck expanded from simply pointing out the gaps
to how NFPA and like-minded organizations intended
to fill those gaps. With Outthink Wildfire, NFPA had
now declared that such measures must take place to
help make existing homes safer and to ensure that
new construction was designed and built with wildfire
in mind. Many students in the classes I spoke to had
experienced wildfire in their home communities, and
regardless of their field of study they were interested
in learning more. Planning, engineering, and architecture
students wanted to know technical details about
how to make homes ignition resistant. Some asked
if it was possible to design high-density subdivisions
CONFERENCE SESSIONS
Planning Wildfire Evacuations
with the WUI-NITY Tool
Date
Tuesday, June 20
9:15-10:15 a.m.
Speaker
Amanda Kimball
Fire Protection Research
Foundation, NFPA
Protecting the WUI:
How Public-Private Sector
Partnerships Can Generate
Wildfire Awareness
Date
Tuesday, June 20
3:15-4:15 p.m.
Speakers
Ulrich Salzgeber
Colorado Association of Realtors
Chad Julian
Colorado State Forest Service
Carole Walker
Rocky Mountain Insurance
Association
Assessing Wildfire Risk in the
Wildland/Urban Interface:
Resources for Moving Beyond
the Checklist
Date
Wednesday, June 21
9:15-10:15 a.m.
Speakers
Leslie Marshall
SFPE Foundation
Brad Cronin
Strategic Code Solutions
Wildfire Prepared Homes
and the Science Behind
Community Resilience
Date
Wednesday, June 21
10:30-noon
Speakers
Anne Cope
Insurance Institute for Business
& Home Safety
Kevin Phillips
Paradise, California
Karen Collins
Policy, Research and
International, APCIA
Firewise USA
Date
Wednesday, June 21, 2:30-3
p.m.
Speakers
Jan Rimmel
Megan Fitzgerald-McGowan
Aron Anderson
NFPA
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 37
http://nfpa.org/journal
NFPA Journal - Summer 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Summer 2023
