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Rural Wildfire Risk Doesn’t Stop New Residents [1]

['Sarah Melotte', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']

Date: 2025-01-24

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox.



People flee at the onset of a natural disaster. We know this. For those willing and able to leave, there’s the usual scramble. Where are my children’s baby pictures, my social security card? What do I do about my grandmother’s china?

But what happens in the weeks, months, and years following a disaster, when the ash settles and our attention shifts to the next crisis?

In 2017, the Umpqua North Complex fires burned 43,158 acres in Douglas County, Oregon, a rural community in the southwest part of the state. Some people did leave. From 2020 to 2023, 1,100 people moved out of the county. But during the same period, 4,200 people moved into Douglas County, for a net gain of 5,400. .

Net migration (the difference between the number of people who move to a county minus the people who leave) resulted in a gain of 20,000 residents in rural Oregon counties during the same time period.

But this phenomenon isn’t particular to Oregon, or even the Pacific Northwest. Across the nation, people are moving to rural counties with a high risk of wildfires, according to data from Wildfire Risk to Communities, a joint project by Headwaters Economics and the Fire Modeling Institute of the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the Forest Service.

Rural counties with high wildfire risk gained 2.5% of their total 2020 population in net migration between 2020 and 2023, representing a gain of 540,000 residents. Rural counties without high wildfire risk only gained about 1% of their total 2020 population in net migration, meanwhile.

Nearly two-thirds of high risk rural counties experienced a net positive migration between 2020 and 2023 compared to only 60% of rural counties at-large.

Metropolitan areas with high risk of wildfires only gained about half a percentage point of their total 2020 population in net migration, representing an additional 1 million residents.

The Wildfire Risk to Communities categorizes counties as high risk of wildfire if they score above the 84th percentile on their dataset’s wildfire risk index. To put it simply, counties are at high risk of wildfires if 84% of all other counties score lower than them on the index.

Nearly half (48%) of the growth in rural counties at high risk of wildfire happened in the Southeast among rural counties like coastal Georgetown, South Carolina, a popular vacation spot.

These Southeastern counties are not places we usually picture when we think of wildfires, but fire has been a central part of the Southeastern coastal ecosystem for millions of years. Wildfires are particularly important for southern trees like the longleaf pine, which needs fire to germinate its seeds.

But Southeastern counties in general don’t rank as high on the wildfire risk index compared to rural counties in Western states. The average rural county in the South scores in the 60th percentile on the wildfire risk index, but the Coastal West, a region that includes the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, scored, on average, in the 77th percentile.

When you signed up for “Rural Index,” I promised you one map every two weeks, but I’ve included a second one in this issue. My treat. Don’t get used to it.

Rural counties that scored higher than the 90th percentile in the wildfire risk index had a net increase of 82,700 people between 2020 and 2023.

In the Northwest states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, rural counties that scored over the 90th percentile had a net migration that equaled 10% of their 2020 population, representing a net gain of about 24,000 newcomers.

The wildfire risk dataset shows a mild relationship between how a county scores on the wildfire risk index and the county’s net migration. The higher the wildfire risk index, or percentile, the greater the net migration.

But wildfire risk only explains a small portion of the increase in net migration in recent years. Many of rural America’s riskiest counties are in picturesque regions, like the counties surrounding Zion National Park in Utah. My previous reporting for the Daily Yonder explored how areas with outdoor amenities gained population faster than other rural areas.

I suppose now is a good time to remind you that correlation does not equal causation. Wildfires are not causing people to move to risky areas, in other words. That would be absurd. But wildfires seem to be a risk many folks don’t mind taking if it means they get to live near some of America’s most breathtaking views.

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[1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/rural-wildfire-risk-doesnt-stop-new-residents/2025/01/24/

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