Report Assesses Wildfire Risks in West
More than 740,000 residences worth $136 billion in 13 states are at high or very high risk, according to the CoreLogic 2012 Wildfire Hazard Risk Report.
Roughly two months after Lloyd's published a report predicting almost all of North American and most of Europe will experience more wildfire in coming years, the U.S. firm CoreLogic® has released its own report examining wildfire risks in 13 states in the U.S. West.
The CoreLogic 2012 Wildfire Hazard Risk Report estimates more than 740,000 residences worth more than $136 billion in U.S. western states are at high or very high risk from wildfires. States with the greatest estimated exposure in dollar terms are California, Colorado, and Texas, according to the report, which is available free, with registration, at www.corelogic.com.
Charts in the report show the number of U.S. wildfires during the past five years has not been unusually high, but the land area burned by wildfires has been rising recently. In five of the past eight years, 2004-2011, wildfires burned more than 8 million acres.
The Lloyd's report cited recent wildfires in Colorado, Texas, Russia, Greece, and Chile and a report from climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Texas Tech University in predicting insurers will face new challenges from wildfires in many parts of the world. The higher risk to North America and most of Europe results mainly from rising temperature trends, according to a Lloyd's expert.