Wildfire Risk Is Expanding — And Utilities Know It

As it is time to turn T&D World's attention — and my own — to wildfires again for our yearly supplement on mitigation, I thought for a moment that this had perhaps been a quieter year for wildfires. Here on the West Coast, we got some relief in our superdrought conditions as precipitation levels seemed to stabilize and snowcaps returned to our mountains. Unlike in years past when severe wildfires struck places like Los Angeles, California and Hawai'i's island of Maui, fewer headline-making blazes sprang to my mind. 

A quick search of the news proved I was wrong. There are currently wildfires ravaging Nebraska's cattle country during a time of year where pastures should be greening. In South Carolina, a controlled burn became uncontrolled and the fires are shrouding the area in thick, smothering smoke. 

In California's Siskiyou County, another fire is blazing on federally managed land. However, this one, according to the Sacramento Bee, is a prescribed fire, or one set purposefully to limit the amount of debris and fuel that accumulate on the ground. Letting areas periodically burn under controlled conditions can lessen the severity of future fires, or potentially steer them away from populated or sensitive areas. 

In the Deep South, a statewide fire alert was issued in Alabama, as about 50 wildfires were reported and climactic conditions of high wind and low moisture have state authorities worried about a more concentrated and destructive conflagration. Evacuations were ordered recently in the Naples, Florida area, and thousands of acres of that usually wet state are under threat. In fact, 80% of Florida is now under either extreme or exceptional drought conditions, which brings with it the danger of wildfires.

I could continue to list places — including many you wouldn't normally associate with a high risk of fires — that are currently on high alert for the first signs of smoke, or else are already battling fires of their own. When a problem becomes so widespread that the standard for it becoming national news rises, that is when you know the problem is serious indeed. There are places where tens of thousands of acres are being consumed and the national media may not even bother to cover it in the way it did for previous flames that were just as destructive. 

Fortunately, electric utilities, grid operators and technology providers to the electricity industry are already well aware of this spreading danger and are bringing the best scientific know-how, engineering prowess and high-tech solutions to the job of addressing this climatological crisis. I take a lot of solace in that fact, as someone who lives in Oregon's Willamette Valley — a beautiful, yet rapidly drying and heating area that frequently sees destructive blazes.

And as someone who must constantly stay up to date on wildfire solutions, I look forward to this issue every year. It's an opportunity to showcase what we have learned from all these blazes we've had to battle. All the statistics studied, the trends tallied and the numbers crunched lead us to better ways to battle blazes, so I hope you'll enjoy hearing about the advances made in this struggle.