Destructive fires burning into cities in 2017 and 2018 call attention to the long history of fires in California. This commentary summarizes this history and the failure to carry out proposals for wildland fuel management following major fires. California is destined to repeat its history of destructive urban interface fires, without the authority and funding to enforce wildland fuel management.

We analysed the influence of defensible space (fuels within 30 m) on 927 houses exposed to 27 wildfires in New South Wales, Australia. Vegetation and other houses in this zone increased and waterbodies within 200 m decreased likelihood of impact. This re-enforces the importance of defensible space for wildfire risk management.

We examined some of the factors that influence fire managers in northeastern Ontario when they dispatch initial attack resources to fires. Our results suggest that their decisions are influenced by the total number of fires reported the day the fire is reported, the time the fire is reported and the fire weather conditions that day.

The highly populated country of The Netherlands is experiencing increasing wildland fire events, most caused by arson and driven by increasingly dangerous conditions arising from changing climate. A public survey performed in the highly visited Veluwe, a large recreational area in the centre of the country, found that respondents believed that wildfires were a threat to natural areas but not to themselves. Increased efforts to educate the public about the wildfire threat may need to be applied to reduce the danger to residents and visitors to this region.

This study sought to predict wildfire risk areas within a region inside the Brazilian biome known as the Cerrado. To do so, regression and machine-learning models were used in order to predict the probability of fire occurring given a set of environmental variables related to the occurrence of fire.

Our research firmly establishes Arizona cypress as a fire-sensitive but fire-embracing tree species dependent on stand-replacing fires for regeneration. Given its fire sensitivity, however, recent increases in fire frequency in the south-west USA could threaten the viability of this species by preventing the tree from reaching maturity between fires.

We monitored fuel loads during oak woodland and savanna restoration in the Mid-South. Large (≥2.54 cm in diameter) woody fuels increased with increasing thinning intensity, and subsequent burning often failed to reduce this addition. Burning and thinning resulted in a net reduction in smaller fuels: increases in herbaceous fuels did not offset decreases in twigs and leaf litter.