Adapting to Wildfire: Rebuilding After Home Loss

Abstract

Wildfire management now emphasizes fire-adapted communities that coexist with wildfires, although it is unclear how communities will progress to this goal. Hazards research suggests that response to wildfire—specifically, rebuilding after fire—may be a crucial opportunity for homeowner and community adaptation. We explore rebuilding after the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire from Boulder, CO, that destroyed 165 homes, to better understand individual and community adaptation after wildfire. We examined changes in perception of fire risk and structural characteristics and vegetation mitigation of rebuilt homes, to examine how homes, homeowners, and communities changed after fire. We found evidence that adaptation is occurring, as well as evidence that it is not. Overall, rebuilding was slow. More than 3½ years after the fire, only 30% of those who had lost homes had rebuilt. Postfire rebuilding will only change a fraction of homes, but it is a critical process to understand.

Keywords:

• adaptation
• community
• fire-adapted communities
• hazard
• rebuilding
• wildfire
• WUI

Notes

One homeowner who lost a home in the Fourmile Canyon Fire had also lost a home in the Black Tiger Fire.

Some might ask whether choosing to remain in the WUI environment is itself “maladaptive,” but there is no clear answer as to the most “adaptive” decision on relocation. Given the emphasis on encouraging community coexistence with wildfire in the FAC program, and the decades of strong residential growth in the WUI, we think rebuilding in these areas is likely, and chose instead to focus on how people rebuild, and argue that rebuilding with traditional materials/without vegetation mitigation does show a lack of adaptation.

Mitigation practices are not intended to be a guarantee that homes will not ignite, but a way to lessen the risks, so that with fewer homes burning, firefighters will be better able to respond to those that do ignite.