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April 30, 2026
Long-Term Human Health Impacts of Wildfires
The estimated cost of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires was $53 billion, ($40 billion of which was insured), making it the most expensive wildfire ever recorded. While property damage is easily calculated after wildfires, costs from health impacts, degraded ecosystems, and disrupted livelihoods are often unaccounted for. One difficult-to-assess health impact comes from smoke inhalation. Following the fires, harmful particles in the atmosphere are estimated to have spiked almost 2 times higher than the maximum level for short-term exposure set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Loss of employment after the fires disproportionately affects low-income and immigrant workers in customer-facing, labor-intensive operations, such as gardening and cleaning services, who lost income as work opportunities disappeared.
In January 2025, Los Angeles experienced two of the deadliest wildfires in California’s history, the Eaton and Palisades fires. While the full extent of the damage is difficult to quantify, reports state 200,000 people experienced evacuation orders or warnings, over 16,000 structures were damaged, and 31 direct deaths were caused. One study estimates the actual death toll was around 440 due to wildfire smoke exposure and healthcare delays. Dry conditions and the 100mph strength of the Santa Ana winds— warm, dry gusts from the desert— turned a small contained fire in the Palisades into a conflagration that ripped through neighborhoods, crossed highways, and only stopped at the coast once it had no more structures to burn. Additional fires such as the Hurst and Sunset fires, also emerged—suppressing the firefighting capabilities in the Los Angeles area.
Home hardening techniques present a way for individuals to take action to protect their homes and businesses from fire damage—ideally with much-needed support from local, state, and federal government programs.
“Home hardening” refers to structural upgrades designed to make buildings more resilient to direct flames, embers, and radiant heat. Options include using ember-resistant vents, installing noncombustible fences, and using composition, metal, or tile for roofing material. Dual pane windows also provide critical protection: if the outer pane breaks, the inner pane can still prevent embers from entering the home, which is imperative as wind-driven embers and debris cause over 90 percent of home ignition. These embers can travel miles before landing on or near a home.
The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) provides home hardening guidelines with its Wildfire Prepared Home (WPH) standard. There are two standards a Wildfire Prepared Home[AOL1] can meet: a “base” standard focused on protection from embers and a “plus” standard that defends against radiant heat and direct flame contact as well. The WPH base standard includes upgrades such as installing noncombustible gutters, using materials for the roof that are Class A fire-rated, and installing vents covered with metal mesh materials that are flame and ember resistant. Further “plus” versions of these upgrades include gutter guards to avoid accumulation of debris, changing skylight material from plastic to glass, and installing metal dryer vents with a flap.
Defensible Spaces
In addition to home hardening, vegetation management is critical for wildfire resilience. With urban structures packed closely together, ensuring trees and shrubs are well-spaced is imperative to ensure that fire does not spread. A study by University of California (UC) Berkeley, showed that removing vegetation within 5 feet of a home can reduce fire damage by 17%. Recently proposed Zone Zero regulations would prohibit all flammable materials, including plants, within one foot of a home in California.
Privacy hedges, common in Los Angeles, are a potential hazard. According to Kelly Martin, a wildland fire advisor for Megafire Action and an EESI briefing speaker, privacy hedges can lead “to ember production in a conflagration environment.” Martin noted that while Los Angeles homeowners value their privacy, the use of hedges is a major fire hazard, as it reduces the open space between structures.
A Natural Process Pushed to Extremes
Wildfires have been part of natural systems for millions of years, providing an ecological balance for many plants and animals. These fires clear out dead organic materials, carving out space for new growth. However, with climate change bringing drier, hotter conditions, wildfires burn and spread more intensely, creating massive destruction not only to the environment but also to urban areas. Urban growth means that more homes are located near or in forests, making them more vulnerable.
For homeowners with gardens, organic mulches such as wood chips, pine, and straw have been the gold standard for plant health, supplying gardens with moist soil retention and suppressing weeds. However, organic mulch also carries a high fire-risk, with the ability to trap heat and ignite spontaneously. One study found that embers from mulch beds “are carried by the wind and may ignite combustible materials in a community far downwind of the fire front” (up to 155 feet downwind in their experiments). Gravel is a fire-resistant alternative that suppresses weeds and retains moisture.
Effective as a Community-Wide Effort
The UC Berkeley study shows home hardening implementation can reduce wildfire damages by up to 50%, drawing on simulation tools and data from the five most destructive wildfires in California prior to 2022. An additional study conducted by the California Department of Insurance and National Association of Insurance Commissioners estimated that the number of properties destroyed by the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025 would have been reduced by 31-35% if all homes had implemented the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home standard, which includes improvements to roof protection, building features, and defensible spaces.
Despite the effectiveness of home hardening, implementation remains limited. Community-wide efforts are critical when implementing home hardening upgrades in urban areas. Even if you adopt the strictest standards for your home, you are at risk from nearby homes. If your neighbor’s house ignites, your house is more likely to suffer damage too. In the community of Montecito, California, wildfire resilience efforts that started in the 90s have paid off. The Montecito Fire Department hosts regular community-wide cleanups, offers free wood-chipping services, and removes overgrowth in areas that are at risk for ignition. In an interview with BBC about the 2017 Thomas Fire, which only damaged 7 homes in the entire town, Maeve Juarez, a wildland fire specialist for the Montecito Fire Department, said that because of these community efforts “the level of damage was considerably lower than projected in the 2016 Montecito community wildfire protection plan or what we experienced during previous fires.”
Affordability is a key concern when discussing wide adoption of home hardening upgrades. According to a report from Headwaters Economics, the cost of fire resistance upgrades can range from $2,000 to $100,000 depending on how comprehensive the retrofit is. A full retrofit might include replacing wood shingles, doors, and deck boards with non-flammable materials, installing dual-paned windows, and more. Low- to no-cost solutions are also available for residents who cannot afford extensive upgrades (see call-out box). The report notes that many of the most effective wildfire resistance strategies are actually fairly affordable routine measures that the homeowner can implement themselves.
Home hardening can bring a double-sided benefit, physically protecting a home but also financially protecting the homeowner by preventing loss of insurance coverage. The affordability and availability of home insurance in California is a major source of concern as wildfires become more frequent and damaging due to climate change. In 2019 alone, 235,250 homeowners in California lost coverage due to insurer nonrenewals, with nonrenewals jumping 61% from 2018 to 2019 in zip codes with higher wildfire risk.
When California homeowners cannot afford or obtain private insurance, they flock to the insurer of last resort—the state’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, which has high premiums and limited coverage.
As the FAIR Plan takes on more high-risk residents and wildfire season becomes longer and burns larger areas, the payout obligation increases. When truly catastrophic wildfires occur, the FAIR Plan does not have the cash resources to pay all damage claims, leading to surcharges on private insurers, private insurance policyholders, or FAIR Plan policyholders.
According to McKinsey & Company, in order to restabilize California’s fire insurance market, insurers would need to collect an additional $8-10 billion in annual premiums from current or new policyholders —unrealistic at a time when home insurance is already unaffordable for many. Instead, rebuilding or retrofitting homes to meet wildfire protection standards could make neighborhoods insurable (and insurance affordable) on the private market again.
California enacted the California Safe Homes Act (AB-888) in October 2025, establishing a grant program at the Department of Insurance to help residents afford home hardening upgrades such as fire-safe roofs and a “non-combustible zone” within five feet of homes.
State Senator Ben Allen from Pacific Palisades introduced SB-894 in early 2026 to establish a California Wildfire Resilience Loan Program to provide “state-backed, low-interest loans for homeowners to retrofit homes and better protect themselves from wildfire.” This legislation would improve home hardening accessibility for residential, nonprofit, and commercial properties.
In an interview with EESI, Cayley Chan, legislative aide to State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez, said that in addition to grant programs, concrete incentives like guaranteed insurance coverage are needed to encourage homeowners to invest in home hardening retrofits. The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act (SB 1076) was introduced in February 2026 by Sen. Pérez to require insurance companies to write and renew policies for homes that have home hardening upgrades. Endorsed by the Eaton Fire Survivors Network and Consumer Watchdog, this bill would increase adoption of home hardening upgrades as well as protect homeowners from coverage loss. Unfortunately, SB-1076 failed to pass in the Senate Insurance Committee in April 2026.
In 2018, Paradise, California experienced the Camp fire—California’s largest, most destructive, and deadliest wildfire to date. Over 18,000 structures were destroyed and 85 lives were lost. When it was time to rebuild, Paradise became the first community in the country to implement the WPH standard as a rebuilding measure combined with upgraded building codes for wildfire safety. With support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Paradise residents could fund home hardening retrofits.
These hardening efforts led to willingness among insurance companies to serve the area again. According to the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, some residents who implemented home hardening measures saw their insurance premiums fall 800% compared to FAIR Plan rates. This kind of reduction is especially significant for residents like Brian and Morgan Gobba, who saw their FAIR Plan annual premium reach $6,000 after moving back to Paradise after the fire.
Inspired by Paradise, Los Angeles could improve community resilience against the threat of wildfires and address the increasing costs of insurance through mass implementation of wildfire hardening standards. AB-888, SB-894, and SB-1076 provide examples of policies that assist in these goals.
Some Senators at the federal level are following California’s lead and proposing grant programs for home hardening incentivization. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) introduced the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act (S.3609) in January of 2026. This bill would create a grant program for communities to become more resilient to wildfires, with $1 billion in funding annually. The grants would be used for a wide range of resilience activities such as defensible space projects, hardening critical infrastructure and homes, and strategic land use planning.
Author: Andie May Hardin
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