A Good Offense: How Utilities Can Stay Ahead of Growing Wildfire Risks

Electric utilities across North America are facing an unprecedented challenge: Wildfires are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more costly, and the electrical grid itself is increasingly implicated in ignitions. For operations professionals, this reality demands a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive wildfire management strategies.

The Numbers Tell the Story

Statistics from recent years paint a sobering picture. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 2024 saw 331% more acres burned by wildfire than the previous year, and 2025 started with devastating fires in Southern California that alone will likely surpass global disaster losses from a decade ago. But this isn't just a West Coast problem anymore. Notable wildfires in 2025 have burned over 1,000 acres in six states outside traditionally high-risk regions, including New Jersey, Minnesota, and Oklahoma.

The financial implications are staggering. Insurance premiums have skyrocketed. One Colorado utility saw a 389% increase in excess liability premiums from 2014 to 2023, followed by another almost four-fold jump in 2024. That's nearly 15 times higher costs in just a decade.

As more people move into wildland-urban interface areas, utility assets follow customers into higher-risk terrain. A 20-year study found a 41% increase in homes built in these high-risk areas, and this growth continues expanding beyond California into the Rocky Mountain West and Southeastern states.

While long-term infrastructure hardening strategies will ultimately reduce wildfire risks, utilities can't wait years for results. The risk is growing now, and operations teams need tools and strategies that can improve safety and defensibility immediately. The good news? Utilities with robust wildfire mitigation plans and supporting documentation are seeing insurance premium stabilization and even reductions. Insurers are recognizing that proactive, well-documented vegetation management programs reduce actual ignition risks.

The Path Forward: Risk-Based Vegetation Management

As the saying goes, the best offense is a good defense. To mitigate and prevent wildfires and their impact on the grid, the most effective approach combines multiple strategies into a single "system of engagement," a unified platform that integrates risk identification with field work execution. This system can bring together a few key components: 

Multi-Source Risk Detection:

• LIDAR and satellite analytics for comprehensive coverage
• Drone inspections for detailed asset assessment
• Aerial patrols from helicopters
• Traditional ground-based arborist inspections

Bare Ground Pole Treatments

While currently mandated only in California, utilities nationwide are adopting this practice of applying herbicides to eliminate vegetation within a radius of any structure that can spark or drip oil.

Location-Based Documentation

Perhaps the most critical lesson from utilities that have faced wildfire investigations: your documentation must be granular, defensible, and rapidly accessible. This means your work management system needs native mapping capabilities and the ability to generate location-specific reports on demand.

Technology as a Force Multiplier 

Modern wildfire prevention isn't just about having more crews in the field. It's about working smarter with better technology integration. The most successful utilities are moving beyond spreadsheets and manual processes to comprehensive digital platforms that:

• Aggregate risk inputs from multiple remote sensing sources
• Dispatch and track field work with full audit trails
• Generate regulatory reports and litigation support documentation
• Provide real-time situational awareness during events

With technology that helps organize and coordinate wildfire prevention and response, it’s a little easier to imagine how effectiveness could be improved in every stage of the wildfire:

Before the Fire: The foundation of effective wildfire prevention starts with developing comprehensive Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMPs), even if they're not legally required in your state. While only California, Oregon, and Colorado currently mandate these plans, utilities nationwide are proactively creating them as regulatory trends shift. Establishing relationships with meteorologists for real-time weather monitoring has become essential, with some West Coast utilities forming in-house meteorology teams to track granular weather conditions that trigger PSPS decisions. Advanced utilities are also deploying AI-powered wildfire detection cameras mounted on transmission towers and cell towers across their service territories, providing live video feeds that can triangulate fire origins and overlay asset maps to quickly determine proximity to utility infrastructure. 

During the Fire: When high-risk conditions emerge, utilities need sophisticated tools to make optimal decisions under pressure. Fire simulation software has emerged as a critical technology, allowing operators to model potential fire spread based on vegetation, fuel loads, and prevailing winds—not just for annual planning but for real-time decision-making during active events. Maintaining clear communication channels becomes paramount as utility response necessarily crosses multiple departments, similar to how firefighting involves multi-agency coordination from county to federal levels. Situational awareness dashboards that integrate data from GIS, ADMS, and SCADA systems provide the unified view executives need to make informed decisions about PSPS activation and answer critical questions about potential fire attribution.

After the Fire: Once conditions subside, the focus shifts to rapid but safe restoration and documentation defense. Utilities must quickly inspect assets that were part of PSPS events to verify integrity after high winds, as completing these safety inspections faster means restoring power sooner and reducing customer frustration. Simultaneously, operations teams must prepare for immediate regulatory and legal scrutiny that begins regardless of whether there's clear attribution to utility assets, requiring detailed records of asset inspection and vegetation management work history in affected areas. Working proactively with insurers by providing comprehensive maintenance records with digital fingerprinting and defensible documentation can help utilities get ahead of damage claims that can reach hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. 

A Marathon, Not a Sprint

The utilities that will thrive in this new operating environment are those that recognize wildfire prevention as a comprehensive operational discipline, not just a seasonal concern. With the right strategies, technology, and documentation practices, utilities can not only protect their communities and assets but also position themselves for sustainable operations in an era of increasing climate-related risks.

Want to learn more about vegetation management solutions for wildfire prevention?

Learn how to take a proactive approach to vegetation management by watching the on-demand webinar: “A Good Offense: Vegetation Management and Wildfire Prevention”. --> Watch Now