Latest Wildfire Headlines
All the headlines from our Wildfire Topic Page, ordered by recency.
After Wildfire, Hawaii Fire Crews Take Stock of Their Ability to Communicate in a Crisis
May 24 2024 // Fire departments across the state are reevaluating their emergency communication capabilities after the Maui wildfires, when the vulnerability of the island’s cellular network — and a lack of advanced communication...
Containment on Arizona Wind-Driven Wildfire Grows
May 22 2024 // Roughly 200 firefighters continued to battle a wildfire in Arizona that quickly grew to more than 14,000 acres. Firefighters have kept the Wildcat Fire size from growing over the past day, but extremely low humidity, warm...
Hawaii Outlines Efforts to Prevent Another Devastating Wildfire Ahead of a Dry Season
May 21 2024 // As Maui continues to recover from the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, Hawaii officials are looking at preventing another similar disaster ahead of what is expected to be a dry, fire-prone season, Gov. Josh...
Arizona Wildfire Growing Amid Windy Conditions
May 20 2024 // A wildfire has led the U.S. Forest Service to shut down a portion of the Tonto National Forest has grown to more than 14,000 acres. The Wildcat Fire increased in size because of windy weather conditions Sunday, prompting...
Hawaii Study: Nearly 75% of Wildfire Survey Participants Have Respiratory Issues
May 20 2024 // A University of Hawaii study examining the health effects of last year’s deadly wildfires on Maui found that up to 74% of participants may have difficulty breathing and otherwise have poor respiratory health, and...
Wildfire Risk
May 20 2024 // While the overall number of wildfires per year is declining, the increasing size and intensity of fires have led to more property damage than ever before. The average fire size has tripled over the past 30 years, according...
Wildfires Could Affect Over Half of Canada’s Oil Sands Output: Report
May 17 2024 // More than half of the oil sands production from Canada could be impacted if the wildfires in Alberta and British Columbia worsen, Rystad Energy said in a report on Thursday. WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Canada is one of the...
Oil-Sands Capital of Canada Now Grappling With Second Wildfire
May 16 2024 // The unofficial capital of Canada’s oil-sands industry is now facing a second wildfire that’s north of the city and closer to major energy operations. The new blaze near Fort McMurray, Alberta, is about 3...
Update: Wildfire Threat to Oil-Sands Capital Expected to Ease as Winds Shift
May 15 2024 // The threat of a wildfire bearing down on the unofficial capital of Canada’s oil-sands industry is expected to lessen as temperatures cool and winds shift, though the prospect of rains dousing the flames entirely...
Canadian Crews Battle Wildfire Threatening Remote Western Town
May 14 2024 // Firefighters on Monday battled a large wildfire heading towards a remote western Canadian town as winds and tinder dry conditions threatened to spread the flames further, a provincial minister said. The largely evacuated...
US States Warned of Unhealthy Air From Wildfires: Weather Watch
May 13 2024 // Air quality has turned unhealthy for parts of the Upper Midwest in the US, including the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, as smoke drifts south from ongoing Canadian forest fires, according to AirNow.gov. The US...
Western Canada Wildfires Prompt Evacuations, Air Quality Warnings
May 13 2024 // The season’s first major wildfires have spread to roughly 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) across Western Canada on Sunday as authorities issued an evacuation order for a community in British Columbia and warned of...
Decayed, Broken Utility Pole Caused Largest Wildfire in Texas History: Report
May 13 2024 // LUBBOCK — A decayed utility pole that broke, causing power wires to fall on dry grass in the Texas Panhandle, sparked the state’s largest wildfire in history, a Texas House committee confirmed Wednesday. And other...
Mexico Is Battling 159 Active Wildfires
May 10 2024 // Mexico is fighting 159 active wildfires across the country amid the year’s second heat wave that has also put the nation’s power grid under stress. Mexico’s national weather service issued an alert that...
Lawyers Handling Lawsuits Over Maui Wildfires to Get Investigation Documents
May 10 2024 // A judge on Friday forced the Hawaii attorney general’s office to turn over to lawyers involved in the hundreds of lawsuits over last summer’s Maui wildfires all documents, interviews and data collected by the...
Maui Sues Cell Carriers Over Failure of Wildfire Warning Alerts During Outage
May 8 2024 // Had emergency responders known about widespread cellphone outages during the height of last summer’s deadly Maui wildfires, they would have used other methods to warn about the disaster, county officials said in a...
New $20M Coverage for California Commercial Property E&S Risks in Wildfire Areas
May 8 2024 // Wildfire Defense Insurance Services is offering a $20 million excess and surplus commercial property coverage for E&S risks in wildfire prone areas of California. The coverage is for total insured value up to $20...
The Top 15 U.S. Metros with High Exposure to Wildfire Risk
May 7 2024 // The number of wildfires per year is going down, but the increasing size and intensity of the fires is creating more property damage than ever before – in fact, the average fire size has tripled over the past 30 years, a...
Growing Wildfire Risk Leaves States Grappling With How to Keep Insurers From Fleeing
May 1 2024 // Months after a catastrophic fire burned more than 2,200 homes in Hawaii, some property owners are getting more bad news—their property insurance won’t be renewed because their insurance company has deemed the risk...
Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp Now Faces $30B Claim Demand in Oregon Wildfires
May 1 2024 // Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s PacifiCorp now faces a demand for $30 billion from victims of Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day wildfires, an escalation of a legal onslaught on the largest grid operator in the western...
