More than 740,000 residences in the western U.S., with estimated value of more than $136 billion, are at “high” or “very high” risk of sustaining damage from a wildfire, with 168,000 of the “very high” risk residents valued at more than $32 billion, according to a new report by CoreLogic.
CoreLogic focused on the Wildland Urban Interface, the area where urban development and wildland meet. Fires are most often attributed to wildland areas, so the best way to recognize high-risk residential structures is to locate the WUI.
Approximately 17 million new homes were built in the U.S. between 1990 and 2008. Ten million of those were constructed in the WUI. About 40 percent of the 115 million individual dwellings in the U.S. are located within the WUI. The past two decades have seen a significant increase in homes lost to wildfire, which corresponds with an increase in residential development in the WUI.
This article originally appeared on PropertyCasualty360.com, a sister site of Credit Union Times.
