Two and a half decades of United States wildfire burn zone disaster data, 2000-2025
Growing wildfire frequency and urban development expanding into fire-prone areas have heightened wildfire risk for wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities. When burn zones come near or cross into communities, the heat, flames, and smoke can harm human health-directly or via psychosocial stressors-to the point of becoming a disaster. We harmonized six wildfire datasets to create the first U.S.-wide spatial dataset of wildfire burn zone disasters. Our criteria for a wildfire burn zone disaster were wildfires that burned near a community (≥96 people per km<sup>2</sup> or met WUI criterion) and resulted in ≥1 civilian fatality, ≥1 destroyed structure, or received federal disaster declaration. We identified 6,212 U.S. wildfire burn zone disasters between 2000-2025. The annual number of these disasters ranged between 61 in 2001 and 570 in 2011 (median = 217), with an increasing trend over the study period. California had the highest number of wildfire burn zone disasters (n = 878, 14.1%). These data may inform demographic, economic, and population health research, as well as policymaking and resource allocation.
Authors
- Heather McBrien (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1587-6614)
- Alexander J. Northrop (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2132-6435)
- Neil Singh Bedi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7146-2048)
- Joan A. Casey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9809-4695)
- Lauren B. Wilner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4439-3734)
- Gabriella Meltzer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6885-9730)
- Danielle Braun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5177-8598)
- Benjamin Steiger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8324-9562)
- Tarik Benmarhnia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4018-3089)
- Brittany Shea (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2545-3634)
- Milo Gordon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4260-3091)
- Elizabeth M Blake (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7777-2439)
- Logan Piepmeier
Institutions
- Boston University (US)
- Boston Medical Center (US)
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US)
- Inserm (FR)
- École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (FR)
- University of Washington (US)
- Columbia University Irving Medical Center (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Institut de Recherche en Santé, Environnement et Travail (FR)
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (US)
- Université de Rennes (FR)
- Columbia University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06226-8
- Primary Topic
- Fire effects on ecosystems
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Institute on Aging
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences