USA Today reported that one in three homes are situated in areas prone to wildfires.
A report from the United States Forest Service released a startling statistics to help explain why wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes in the state of California this weekend.
CalFire, California's firefighting agency reported that more than 750 homes and hundreds of other buildings in the past week.
Forest Service and climate data show that such devastation like wildfire is likely as people continue to build their houses close together in areas vulnerable and susceptible to wildfires and the blazes themselves become more common as a result of prolonged droughts and higher temperatures partly blamed on global warming.
"The large majority of homes destroyed by the Valley Fire so far have been WUI homes," Susan Stewart, a Forest Service scientist, said in an e-mail to USA Today.
"Wildland-Urban Interface" (WUI), where developments are built very close to forests.
The federal agency, in its latest report, estimates that 4.5 million homes in California are built in areas designated as the WUI.
The wildland-urban areas create "an environment in which fire can move readily from forests and grasslands into neighborhoods," the Forest Service's report said. As a result, the expansion of these areas "has increased the likelihood that wildfires will threaten structures and people, and has increased the number of people and homes affected by wildfire."
In a report from the Forest Service using the latest national data available for analysis, less than 10% of land area is considered a wildland-urban area, but 100 million Americans live there, some in every state. That's a record 44 million homes built close together in these fire-prone forests as of 2010, a 16% increase from 2000.
Forest Service asked for the help of the community and homeowners to reduce the risk of wildfires. Simple actions such as clearing dried and dead bush can save your properties and your very life in the future.
