Wildfires pose a growing threat across the U.S., requiring utilities nationwide — not just on the West Coast — to adopt proactive measures.

When thinking about wildfire risk, New England is probably not the first region that comes to mind. These events are more closely associated with the arid, mountainous West. However, that does not mean other parts of the map — and the utilities that operate within them — are free of risk.

Drought conditions seized large chunks of the U.S. Northeast in the closing months of 2024. Swaths of New Jersey and Massachusetts experienced what the U.S. Drought Monitor classified as severe or extreme drought conditions. The same was true in West Virginia and Ohio. Unsurprisingly, this translated into above-normal levels of significant wildland fire potential. Late-year fires in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed more than 8000 acres.

Farther south, a pair of wildfires burned more than 400 acres in North Carolina in January 2025. Local officials claim that one of them — the McDowell County Crooked Creek fire — was sparked after a tree fell on a power line. Downed trees and debris from Hurricane Helene helped to fuel both blazes. In December 2024, a 10-acre brush fire threatened residences around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Eight years earlier, a series of wildfires devoured more than 80,000 acres across North Carolina, northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee. Regional drought conditions at the time were within the U.S. Drought Monitor’s extreme and exceptional range.

By the numbers, these figures are far below the acreage that wildfires burn in places like California, Idaho and New Mexico. In these places, wildland flames regularly claim hundreds of thousands of acres per year. Yet, this kind of comparison is not nearly as straightforward as it might seem. Even California, the most populous state in the Western U.S., has far fewer people per square mile than densely populated states like Massachusetts and New Jersey. It is also worth noting that outside the wide-open spaces of the West, human-built infrastructure is not only everywhere but also typically much older.

For the rest of the U.S., the risk of conflagration is there. It has happened before and will happen again. With researchers projecting increased risk for precipitation shortfalls, swelling fuel stocks and elevated fire conditions in coming years, the potential threat to life and property is difficult to ignore. Utilities from coast to coast and everywhere in between must be prepared.

Strategic Planning

As western utilities have learned through hard experience, successful wildfire mitigation means replacing reactive responses to crisis with proactive plans. They aim to stop fires from sparking and manage and minimize their impacts when they do.

While reactive measures (for example, developing storm response plans) can help to swiftly repair damage and restore service, they do little to manage the risk of either starting a fire or making one worse. On the other hand, proactive planning entails diligently scrutinizing risk and carefully allocating resources in ways that reduce it.

Developing a fire potential index (FPI) is a crucial first step in supporting strategic planning and real-time decision-making. As a composite metric incorporating factors like fuel abundance, precipitation, wind speed and human activity, the FPI is part of a suite of tools for grid operators to assess and quantify fire risk across specific sections of the grid. Its resolution is constrained only by the availability of localized data on these key parameters.

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