Robert W. Gray: Wildfires cost far more than we think

Victoria Times Colonist

Wildfires this year are going to cost the provincial government much more than it thinks. At the end of every fire season the province reports on how much taxpayers’ money went into fire suppression — but the cost of suppression is only a fraction of the total or “true” cost of wildfires. In a position paper just released by the world’s three pre-eminent fire-science associations, the Association for Fire Ecology, the International Association of Wildland Fire and the Nature Conservancy, the authors point out that the true cost of wildfires is typically two to 32 times the suppression cost (fireecologyjournal.org/reduce-wildfire-risks/).