Refocusing the Confronting the Wildfire Crisis Program on Fire-Resistant Land Uses and Fuel-Reduction Treatments Around Western US Communities Could Protect Them All?

Wildfires have burned hundreds of communities in the 11 western US states (11WS) over the last two decades, and a federal program, Confronting the Wildfire Crisis (CWC), is using fuel-reduction treatments (FRTs) over 7-9 million ha in 10 years to reduce exposure of communities to fires in forests, but could a landscape system of fire-resistant land uses and FRTs near communities better protect them all? I used GIS to estimate fire rates from 2000-2021 in 55 land covers to identify potential fire-resistant land uses, then used rates to place them into five categories from Safest to Very Dangerous. I added buffers of 100, 850, 2500, and 5000 m, representing different fire threats, to maps of 4,484 community complexes in the 11WS, then measured the extent of Safeness categories in complexes and their buffers. On average, a surprising 34-39% of area inside complexes and 53% in the outermost buffer was dangerous land uses. When fires from 2000-2021 burned into 788 complexes, 88% of burned area was in dangerous, only 6% in safe land uses, validating both dangerous and safe land uses. For landscape fire protection, communities could: (1) replace dangerous internal land uses with safe uses, (2) retain existing safe uses internally and in buffers, (3) link them with added safe uses, averaging as little as ∼25 m wide by 12-15 km long, across dangerous uses externally, and (4) supplement these externally with continuous FRTs to reduce fire intensity and ember and smoke production. Nearly all 4,484 community complexes could feasibly be protected in a decade if CWC funding were refocused on this effort.