Measuring the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire: a case study of the 2010 Schultz Fire in Northern Arizona

Evan E. Hjerpe; Melanie M. Colavito; Catrin M. Edgeley; Jack T. Burnett; Thomas Combrink; Diane Vosick; Andrew Sánchez Meador

doi:10.1071/WF23036

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Measuring the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire: a case study of the 2010 Schultz Fire in Northern Arizona

Evan E. Hjerpe

^A ^B , Melanie M. Colavito

^A ^* , Catrin M. Edgeley ^C , Jack T. Burnett ^C , Thomas Combrink ^A , Diane Vosick ^A and Andrew Sánchez Meador ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA.

^B Conservation Economics Institute, Twin Falls, ID, USA.

^C School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA.

^* Correspondence to: melanie.colavito@nau.edu

^# These authors contributed equally to this paper

International Journal of Wildland Fire 32(10) 1474-1486 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23036
Submitted: 14 March 2023 Accepted: 24 August 2023 Published: 21 September 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

Wildfires often have long-lasting costs that are difficult to document and are rarely captured in full.

Aims

We provide an example for measuring the full costs of a single wildfire over time, using a case study from the 2010 Schultz Fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, to enhance our understanding of the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire.

Methods

We conducted a partial remeasurement of a 2013 study on the costs of the Schultz Fire by updating government and utility expenditures, conducting a survey of affected homeowners, estimating costs to ecosystem services and updating costs to real 2021 US dollars.

Key results

Costs associated with the Schultz Fire continued to accrue over 10 years, particularly those associated with post-wildfire flooding, totalling between US$109 and US$114 million. Suppression costs represented only 10% of total costs.

Conclusions

This study is the first of its kind to include a remeasurement of wildfire costs and to provide a long-term assessment of the same wildfire over a 10-year period.

Implications

Our results and lessons learned can help standardise approaches for full cost accounting of wildfire and illuminate the breadth of typically latent and indirect economic costs of wildfire such as post-wildfire flooding.

Keywords: community wellbeing, ecosystem services, forest restoration, full cost of wildfire, net value change, post-wildfire flooding, risk mitigation, Schultz Fire, uncharacteristic wildfire.

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