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As wildfire occurrence and severity increases, so does the need for accurate methods of wildfire risk assessment. The Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) developed a Rapid Assessment tool that is not only simple for wildfire practitioners to implement, but provides higher specificity than previous tools as it incorporates research on individual differences in home susceptibility to wildfire (Figure 1). 

For this bulletin, James Meldrum was interviewed about his recent publication (Meldrum et al., 2022, Parcel level risk affects wildland fire outcomes: Insights from homes destroyed in the 2020 East Troublesome Fire, Fire) in which he and his coauthors found that properties in Grand County identified as higher risk by the Rapid Assessment tool were more likely to have been destroyed by the East Troublesome Fire. Given this, they recommend using the tool to identify at-risk properties and determine potential mitigation actions to reduce wildfire risk to individual homes and across communities. The bulletin also describes Meldrum's ongoing efforts to collaborate with Grand County Wildfire Council and other partners to understand and support decisions about wildfire risk mitigation on private property.

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