Latest Wildfire Headlines
All the headlines from our Wildfire Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Decayed, Broken Utility Pole Caused Largest Wildfire in Texas History: Report
May 13 2024 // LUBBOCK — A decayed utility pole that broke, causing power wires to fall on dry grass in the Texas Panhandle, sparked the state’s largest wildfire in history, a Texas House committee confirmed Wednesday. And other...
Mexico Is Battling 159 Active Wildfires
May 10 2024 // Mexico is fighting 159 active wildfires across the country amid the year’s second heat wave that has also put the nation’s power grid under stress. Mexico’s national weather service issued an alert that...
Lawyers Handling Lawsuits Over Maui Wildfires to Get Investigation Documents
May 10 2024 // A judge on Friday forced the Hawaii attorney general’s office to turn over to lawyers involved in the hundreds of lawsuits over last summer’s Maui wildfires all documents, interviews and data collected by the...
Maui Sues Cell Carriers Over Failure of Wildfire Warning Alerts During Outage
May 8 2024 // Had emergency responders known about widespread cellphone outages during the height of last summer’s deadly Maui wildfires, they would have used other methods to warn about the disaster, county officials said in a...
New $20M Coverage for California Commercial Property E&S Risks in Wildfire Areas
May 8 2024 // Wildfire Defense Insurance Services is offering a $20 million excess and surplus commercial property coverage for E&S risks in wildfire prone areas of California. The coverage is for total insured value up to $20...
The Top 15 U.S. Metros with High Exposure to Wildfire Risk
May 7 2024 // The number of wildfires per year is going down, but the increasing size and intensity of the fires is creating more property damage than ever before – in fact, the average fire size has tripled over the past 30 years, a...
Growing Wildfire Risk Leaves States Grappling With How to Keep Insurers From Fleeing
May 1 2024 // Months after a catastrophic fire burned more than 2,200 homes in Hawaii, some property owners are getting more bad news—their property insurance won’t be renewed because their insurance company has deemed the risk...
Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp Now Faces $30B Claim Demand in Oregon Wildfires
May 1 2024 // Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s PacifiCorp now faces a demand for $30 billion from victims of Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day wildfires, an escalation of a legal onslaught on the largest grid operator in the western...
‘Buffett Got it Wrong’ on California Fire Risk: PG&E CEO
Apr 29 2024 // Warren Buffett’s warning that wildfires have turned utilities across the western US into risky investments is mistaken — at least in California, according to the head of the state’s largest electricity...
New Jersey Forest Service Says 510-Acre Wharton Wildfire Is 100% Contained
Apr 25 2024 // The New Jersey Forest Fire Service said it has reached 100% containment of a 510-acre wildfire in the area of Jackson Rd. in Wharton State Forest. The fire burned in both Waterford Twp, Camden County and Shamong Twp,...
Hawaii Lawmakers Take Aim at Vacation Rentals After Wildfire Amplifies Housing Crisis
Apr 24 2024 // Amy Chadwick spent years scrimping and saving as a single mother of two to buy a house in the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. But after a devastating fire leveled Lahaina in August and reduced...
Wildfires in Canada’s Oil Sands Region Prompts Evacuation Orders
Apr 23 2024 // Wildfires erupted across Canada’s main oil producing province of Alberta and an evacuation order was issued as the region braces for a repeat of last year’s unprecedented season. Members of the indigenous first...
Highlights of Reports on Deadly 2023 Hawaii Wildfire
Apr 22 2024 // More than half a year after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century burned through a historic Maui town, officials are still trying to determine exactly what went wrong and how to prevent similar catastrophes in...
Wildfires Are Upending Some of the Safest Bets on Wall Street
Apr 18 2024 // When the Texas Panhandle went up in flames this winter, the news spread fast on Wall Street. An electric utility by the name of Xcel Energy Inc. was getting blamed for the massive blaze — a lawsuit pointed the finger at...
Rupture on TC Energy’s NGTL Gas Pipeline Sparks Wildfire in Alberta
Apr 17 2024 // A section of TC Energy’s NGTL gas pipeline system in Alberta ruptured and caught fire on Tuesday, sparking a wildfire in a remote area, the company said. “An initial ignition of natural gas at the rupture site...
Drought, Heat Raise Risk of Repeat of Canada’s Record-Breaking Wildfires of 2023
Apr 12 2024 // Canada’s emergency preparedness minister warned Wednesday the country’s wildfire season could be more explosive than last year when it led to unprecedented smoke conditions across much of the country and into...
Green Shield Risk, Striior Announce Wildfire Analytics and Underwriting Collaboration
Apr 11 2024 // Striior Insurance Solutions a managing general agent specializing in builder’s risk and a division of Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions, has partnered with Green Shield Risk Solutions, a Chicago-based catastrophe...
US Wildfires Are Getting Bigger and More Complex, Prompting Changes in Firefighting
Apr 11 2024 // It’s shaping up to be a long wildfire season, with Texas already seeing its largest blaze in recorded history and firefighters becoming overwhelmed with recent blazes in Virginia. Just in the first three months of...
Europe’s Wildfires in 2023 Were Among Worst This Century: Report
Apr 11 2024 // The 2023 wildfire season in the Europe was among the worst this century, according to a European Commission report published on Wednesday. Last year, more than half a million (504,002) hectares, an area twice the size of...
Two Oklahoma Firefighters Injured Battling Wildfire That Prompted Evacuations
Apr 10 2024 // MOORELAND, Okla. (AP) — Two Oklahoma volunteer firefighters are recovering after suffering burns battling a weekend wildfire in northwest Oklahoma, officials said. Mooreland firefighters Jared Brittain and Max Clark...