Latest Wildfire Headlines
All the headlines from our Wildfire Topic Page, ordered by recency.
U.S. Western States Preparing for Summer Wildfire Season
Jun 1 2021 // Wearing soot-smudged, fire-resistant clothing and helmets, several wildland firefighters armed with hoes moved through a stand of ponderosa pines as flames tore through the underbrush. The firefighters weren’t there...
PG&E to Pay $150M for Botched Outages, California Wildfires
May 28 2021 // Pacific Gas & Electric is getting hit with a nearly $150 million bill for neglect that caused Northern California wildfires during the past two years and mismanagement of blackouts designed to prevent the...
California Seeing More Wildfires as Drought Intensifies
May 26 2021 // As California sinks deeper into drought it already has had more than 900 additional wildfires than at this point in 2020, which was a record-breaking year that saw more than 4% of the state’s land scorched by...
Western U.S. Wildfires Have Made Insurance for Contractors a Tough Buy
May 25 2021 // Things look bad with California’s ever-sooner wildfire season seemingly approaching and what’s shaping up to be a severe drought across the Western U.S. The plague of wildfires in the past few years in...
Crews Make Progress Against Los Angeles Wildfire
May 19 2021 // Firefighters increased containment of a Los Angeles wildfire and officials identified the man suspected of starting the blaze that prompted evacuations in canyon neighborhoods. Ramon Rodriguez Flores was detained Sunday...
1K Los Angeles Residents Ordered to Evacuate in Wildfire
May 17 2021 // About 1,000 Los Angeles residents were evacuation orders on Monday as firefighters protected canyon homes from a smoky wildfire that churned through vegetation that hasn’t burned in half a century. The cause of the...
Oregon Landowner Suit Seeks $103M from Public Utilities for Wildfire
May 17 2021 // A lawsuit filed on behalf of 70 landowners in Oregon’s McKenzie River Valley seeks $103 million from Lane Electric Cooperative and Eugene Water and Electric Board for damages linked to one of the Labor Day fires that...
Private Firefighting Firms Add to Tension While Saving Vineyards, Mansions From Wildfires
May 17 2021 // Last October, firefighter Ryan Bellanca and his crew battled to keep the raging Glass Fire in California from devastating an upmarket Napa Valley vineyard. But Bellanca wasn’t working for any fire department. He owns...
California Commissioner Calls on Insurers to Do More to Boost Wildfire Prep
May 13 2021 // California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara called for property insurers in the state to step up and do more to help residents and businesses deal with wildfires. Lara on Thursday gave an update on the actions and...
California Wildfire Victims See Little Payout from PG&E Settlement
May 11 2021 // A trust approved by a federal judge to help compensate victims of deadly California wildfires sparked by Pacific Gas & Electric equipment paid survivors just $7 million while racking up $51 million in overhead in its...
Judge Weighs Whether PG&E Violated Probation With 2019 California Fire
May 6 2021 // A federal judge is weighing whether Pacific Gas & Electric violated its criminal probation by sparking a wildfire north of San Francisco that destroyed more than 100 homes and injured six firefighters in October...
Delos Announces New Capacity for California Wildfire Areas
Apr 27 2021 // San Francisco, Calif.-based Delos Insurance Solutions announced an agreement with reinsurance companies that the firm said will result in a five-fold increase in insurance capacity for California homeowners in areas prone...
S.D. Firefighter Landowner Suspects Arson as Large Wildfire Cause
Apr 26 2021 // A former wildland firefighter who owns the land where a burn pile ignited a large wildfire near Rapid City says he believe the blaze was intentionally set. In a 60-page report, the landowner told investigators he was...
Coalition is Letting Californians Know May is Wildfire Awareness Month
Apr 22 2021 // Now is the time for Californians to prepare homes and communities for the coming wildfire season, the StrongerCA Coalition is warning. Last year saw a record-breaking wildfire season, with five of the 10 largest wildfires...
Cape Town Wildfire Largely Contained; Damage Assessment Begins
Apr 21 2021 // CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Fire crews had largely contained a big wildfire on the slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain on Tuesday as the city started to come to terms with the damage caused by what officials...
Wildfire on Cape Town’s Table Mountain Rages Out of Control
Apr 19 2021 // More than 250 firefighters in Cape Town battled a massive blaze that broke out on the slopes of the city’s Table Mountain on Sunday and spread to a university campus, severely damaging at least three buildings and...
California Toughens PG&E Wildfire Safety Oversight
Apr 16 2021 // California officials on Thursday voted to toughen oversight of Pacific Gas & Electric, saying the utility had largely failed to perform required tree-trimming work near power lines in areas with the highest risk of...
California Targets Urgent Projects as Wildfire Season Looms
Apr 15 2021 // California is in such an urgent race with another devastating wildfire season that officials began soliciting local project ideas even before they had money to pay for them. It faces such a threat of drought that the...
California Fire Victim Trust Has Received 250K Claims So Far
Apr 14 2021 // The Fire Victim Trust, established to pay California wildfire victims on July 1, 2020, has received 40,000 claims questionnaires representing more than 70,000 claimants and roughly 250,000 individual claims, according to...
California Plans $536M for Wildfire Mitigation Before Fire Season
Apr 14 2021 // California will authorize $536 million for wildfire mitigation and forest management projects before the worst of the fire season strikes later this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders said. That more than...
