announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: joining us as matthew eby, founder and director of 1st street foundation to talk about a new report about wildfires. the headline is "tens of millions of u.s. properties face wildfire risks."

you said one in five single-family homes in the u.s. is at risk of a wildfire -- being in a wildfire the next 30 years. tell us why. guest: the report really looks at a few things. first and foremost, it looks at the state of the fuels across the country like forests or things that can combust. the likelihood of ignition and subsequent wildfires that would spread across the country throughout 2022. what we found when looking at this year's wrist within the approach we used is that there is tens of millions of homes that face some level of risk from wildfires. host: just in 2022? guest: that's right. when you are looking at an annualized risk of probability of something happening what we find is there is about 30 million properties that have pretty severe risk. if you have that home for a 30

year period, a typical mortgage, you have a 1% chance of wildfire reaching your building. 30 million properties have that level of risk and many more that have more extreme risk. host: how did you go about calculating this? guest: well, we worked with a great group of academics as well as for-profit institutions that have spent decades on the topics. these are experts in fuels, climatology, weather. what we were able to do is use software called elm fire to create 100 million fire simulations. we looked across all the places wildfires could have started. we then look at the potential weather scenarios over a 10 year period so we have an average, and then we simulate and watch where they go. if they impact a property, we use a monte carlo simulation.

looking at all the different times wildfires spread, how many made it to that property, and what were the odds of that of happening today? because we do it so many times over and over and over we get a good picture of the likelihood of homes impacted by wildfires today. but we did not just look at today. we looked at the condition 30 years from today when it will be hotter, drier. we ran another 100 million simulations in that period to understand how wildfire will change over that 30 years from the impacts of climate. host: why? why did you try to -- why did you want to do this study? guest: up until this point there has not been a way to look at specific property risk from wildfire. the forest service does a great job and they have a thing called wildfire risk communities. what that does is allows you to

look at relative risk. my county's wrist relative to another county and it is made for, you know, understanding risks from a high level so you can take action on management. what we were looking at is something completely different which do not exist at all which is, how likely is that specific home to be in a wildfire? further, how likely is that home to combust? knowing the intensity of the flames that make it to the property and what is the consequence of it? looking at two things, the exposure to the likelihood of wildfire and the consequence, the flames causing that home to combust or the embers landing on a home causing it to combust. we did this because it has not existed before. not only did we release the findings on the report but if you go to our website, riskfactor.com, you can type in your address and see how likely your home is to be impacted by a

wildfire and the subsequent consequences. host: what do you think insurance companies do with the information? guest: insurance companies are a little different in the sense they are not like a typical homeowner. an insurance company looks for a 12 month policy. they typically have you for an annual premium that covers risk over one year. they are looking at risk and saying, of all the policies i hold, how likely is it someone will have something happen to their home, the wildfire reaches it, and it burns down and i have to pay out on that policy? they look at a different methodological approach. a homeowner is different in two ways. one, they only care about one home they own or rent or are looking to sell. two, they are looking at an overall period of time longer than one year time horizon. when you think of probability it

is different than an insurance company over 12 months. if you own a home 30 years, as we were talking about earlier, your annual risk adds up over time. it is called cumulative risk. if you have a 1% risk today of being in a wildfire or your home flooding and you own that home for 30 years, over that 30 year period you have a 26% chance of that happening. one in four chance which sounds different than a 1% annual risk. it is 1% each given year over 30 years. when you care about a home or looking at a risk over a cumulative period it is different than a one year policy. different than the insurance company. host: our most of these homes out west? is this the area you focused on? guest: instinctively and intuitively everyone hears about wildfires out west. logically you would think that is where the vast majority of risk is.

there is a ton of risk, don't get me wrong, but there is also risk in texas, florida. when you look at the highest levels of risk, that 1% annual risk, we actually see that the number of properties in florida, texas and california are about the same. but when we look at the changing climate, that 30 year time horizon and what changed over the next 30 years when we look at the state of the fuels and heat and combustion 30 years from now, that is where you see the west coast is about 6x what it is today whereas florida and texas are doubling. astonishing numbers to say, oh, they are only doubling in texas and florida. but there is a 6x multiplier in california with homes with extreme risk. by and large the numbers are what you would expect on the west coast today but the shocking places are these other loca.

these are broad wildfires spreading for days out west but they are more impactful to properties. host: matthew eby is our guest, founder and executive director of the first street foundation. if you live in the eastern central part of the country, dial in with your questions or comments about wildfire risk at (202)-748-8000. if you live in the mountain pacific area, (202)-748-8001. send us a text with your first name, city and state at (202)-748-8003. matthew eby, you touched on it but what are the contributing factors to risk of a wildfire? guest: as i was mentioning, the first and foremost is what can catch on fire? those are typically called fuels. you look at the fuels across the

country and then we look at, well, we know where the trees are, the types of trees, shrubs, all of the different states of the fuels. then we want to know how likely it is for something to then catch fire. that is from things that are human caused, everything from power utility lines that come through or somebody trying to put out a cigarette walking in the forest, or gender reveal parties that we have seen have pyrotechnics start forest fires. human causes along with natural causes like lightning strikes that then start the fuel on fire. once it starts the next most important thing is whether it will keep going from the weather. that matters with humidity and that matters with wind. those two things along with the heat that actually causes the fuel to dry out and combust. then it really makes the conditions on whether the

wildfire begins to spread and where it spreads or whether it is suppressed. suppression is something else we take into account which is the forest service going out for people trying to mitigate the fires, trying to put them out. taking all those into account is really how we create our model using software and it simulates all these things. we can do it over and over and over to then know where it is the wildfires will get to, and once they are there we have partnered with a large engineering company that is a 20,000, 30,000 person firm. they look at how combustible are they? different levels of intensity makes it to that structure and it is made of vinyl siding or brick and it has all these different components. how likely is it to combust and subsequently burned down?

bringing all these elements together we are able to tell you not just the exposure across the country but how many homes would actually potentially combust and have that event happen to them. host: i want to play for you and our viewers the interior department. [video clip] >> climate change continues to drive the intersection of extreme heat, drought and wildland fire danger across the u.s., creating wildfires that move with the speed and intensity previously unseen. climate change created a continuous fire year for our nation and american communities continue to bear the brunt of the resulting cycle of intensifying drugs, wildfires and poor air quality. we want to better safeguard people, communities

and resources. the drought outlook for the u.s. is very concerning. noaa's outlook shows continual drought across all of the west. even in areas that have seen above normal rainfall this past winter we may expect them to experience increased vegetation growth and fast-moving wildfires during a dry, hot summer. host: matthew eb on the drug. this is the headline from the "los angeles times." the former secretary calls for the revamping of the colorado river pack. the state surrounded that share this water and have a sharing agreement. curious what your thoughts are on drought conditions. that is a factor to the wildfire risk. guest: absolutely. i mean, drought is one of the components of a dry vegetation and that is what causes things

to combust. when we are going through a state of drought and don't have the precipitation, which is causing the water in the forest to stay at the levels we wanted to be so it is not likely to combust, that is what we see as the conditions that are concerning on those red flag days. when are we thinking a wildfire is going to happen? lack of humidity and the wind speeds. how quickly can it go? as you heard in that testimony, what we see is that vegetation that grows up during the spring, if it is really dried out, that is what causes wildfires to move quickly and actually get up into the canopies. once you have wildfire in the canopy of a tree you see it move from tree to tree and those of the intense fires that are

difficult to put out. he also touched on the air quality. that is one of the big things from smoke when you have these large wildfires and continuous wildfires burning. there is a lot of smoke that comes off of them and can move in directions that while you may not be at risk of fire, the smoke gets blown into the community and have poor air quality days. you are these impacts from wildfires, not just the direct, but the consequences of poor air quality and smoke impact. host: we are going to get to calls but first, explain your background in weather and also why you created this organization, this foundation. guest: sure. before starting the first street foundation i spent years at the weather channel working with 220 climatologists, meteorologists

really understanding what was the issue with climate. with that knowledge and understanding i started the foundation so that we could actually have the experts come together to create physical climate models, be it flood, wildfire, wind, the things that are changing. and from the climate impacting things physically, structures and homes. that is what we wanted to do. we started by looking at floods and brought about 80 world-renowned experts in flooding together to model every type of flooding from hurricanes , storm surge, ravine flooding, and really do that in an open method. everything we do goes through the peer review process and all of our methods are on our website. we are pushing the signs forward and everybody can build off the backs of each other. all of our research is old off the -- built off the decades and

decades of research so we can move that forward. we did the same with wildfire. we partnered with 50 experts in the wildfire domain, climatologists, fuel experts, weather experts, so we can bring this expertise together and create the model at a high enough resolution that we could applied to individual homes and structures and turn it into a website at riskfactor.com for flooding and wildfire. but the data sets are available for the federal government, state government, local governments to use to understand how to mitigate and adapt to these risks from flooding or wildfires. host: we are going to go to ken in golden valley, arizona. go ahead with your question or comment. ken, good morning. golden valley, arizona. caller: good morning. host: we are listening.

please go ahead with your question or comment. caller: i am a retired forest service employee, 36 years firefighting and wildland fire investigation. one of the things is there is a big difference between climate change and global warming. the climate has always been changing in the world since the beginning of time. global warming is basically a theory. what i have seen is that the population has increased, more people are moving into forest and brush lands which causes risk they are moving into areas that cannot be protect the. which, in most cases, means firefighting efforts have to go toward protecting structures instead of putting the fire out. it also means there is more things to burn. host: let's take that point. guest: if you look at noaa's

disaster tracker and all the years up until this last year, we see in the last five years 66% of all damage has happened. i would argue there is a clear sign that wildfires and wildfire damages are going up and there is an exponential impact of wildfires. that does have things like the consequences of people moving out of cities into more of the wildland, urban interface which does have damages. but the severity and size of these fires taking place are unprecedented. i do not believe that is just from folks starting fires and out enough resources. i think there is a clear and proven signal between heat and combustion and climate change that is causing that. host: ken, are you still there?

you had a follow-up. caller: yes, i am. is your speaker familiar with the fires of 1910? huge wildfire that went across the northwestern united states. it was probably just as severe as any fire we have now. the main difference was we did not have the people. i think your speaker is basically pushing the global warming, you know, that is what he is pushing. i don't agree with that. host: matthew eby, is that what you are doing? guest: i think we are talking probability. there is a probability of something happening like a large fire in 1910 and that could happen again and again. the question is, how frequent are those and is the frequency of those events or the size of the fires growing over time? it is an observed thing.

it is not a hypothesis of what happened. these are interactions we are seeing. that has to do with warmer environments and the changing forest because it is hotter out with less humidity. host: larry in florida. good morning. caller: good morning. say, i have a question plus a theory. and i would like to ask him how many big jets do we have the drop the chemical down? every time that i watch these fires as the one jet and maybe 20 helicopters that drop down 1000 gallons. why don't we have more of these jet planes that carry, what, 200,000 gallons? let's snuff out the fire from the start. if we had 10 of those jets flying around, in my theory is some people do not care if homes

burned down because that creates money for them. people have to rebuild and get new furniture, etc. if he could answer that first question about how many jets we have. guest: i am not sure how many of the jets are there for firefighting and protection and suppression. i know that it is different across each day but williams of dollars are spent on it, rightfully so, each year to ensure that we have the right suppression techniques available and are able to do the things like cutting fire breaks. all of these important things so that we can mitigate the fire as much as possible and keep them at bay. the unfortunate part is as these things grow the forests are

getting drier and we end up with these wildfires starting. it is hard to put them out when the fuels are there for the wildfire to keep going and it is difficult to actually suppress them as we are seeing now with wildfires early in the season burning down 160 or so homes about a month ago and what we saw in california with a 15 or 20 homes a couple of weeks ago. host: do your models show how much more potential damage there could be to these areas if we continue on this trajectory? guest: that's right. what we see is there is about 100,000 homes, for example, it california -- we will stick with the west coast -- that have a 1% risk of being in a wildfire today. that grows to 600,000 homes by 2052. over 30 years the homes that did not have that level of risk

increases 6x. across places like florida we see that go from just over 100,000 to just over 200,000. same in texas. we are seeing a doubling of extreme risk from wildfire across the country which is just a boggling fact. in such a short time we are seeing such a change in risk. host: i also want to play bruce westerman on the natural forest committee. here were his thoughts on reducing wildfires. [video clip] >> the truth is even as the budget have continued to climb for land management agencies we are not seeing the paradigm shift we all know needs to happen if we are going to truly tackle this historic crisis. the primary culprit bogging down responsible management and recovery of our overgrown

forests remain regulatory burdens and the continued weaponization of our courts by activist groups that litigate even the smallest management project. i have said many times before and will say it over and over, the forest and nature could care less what we say in this room. they could care less how much the federal government sends to an agency. they just keep growing in the fires keep burning. as long as we are throwing money at it and not addressing the root causes, that is what they are going to do. host: what about his point of overgrowth of the forest? guest: i think what he is mentioning there are the best intentions in areas to do things to actively manage the wildland urban interface.

unfortunately, there are places you have conflicting interests. there is environmental groups that would then be looking at, well, if you are going into this forest trying to treat the forest to make sure it is less combustible and less likely to spread, there are other things that would be on the table. whether mib wildlife that are impacted or migratory -- whether it be wildlife that are impacted or migratory patterns. then we have competing interests of what we are trying to solve for. i am not one side of the other on what is right or wrong but without the proper treatments, we are just going to see this exacerbated and getting worse and worse as we know the temperatures are increasing, the forests are getting drier and more likely to combust. host: david in park ridge, illinois. david in park ridge, illinois, go ahead. one last call for david.

lynn in bishop, california. caller: good morning. host: morning. caller: i have to agree with bruce westerman. i live in the international forest and the biggest problem and the biggest threat in california are the environmentalists that stop people from going in and logging and cleaning out these forests. to sit there and claim your 30 year model, even knowing what the drought conditions are going to be like the next 30 years, is more government garbage. this is never going to be solved because every time the forest service -- first of all, they have lost their ability to manage any kind of lands. if they want to go in and open stuff, we have stands of timber everywhere in our forest and a

shortage of lumber. it does not make sense to somebody who has comments and works and lives in the area. as long as we are getting most of our goods from early china and dirty india that had zero environmental laws and have their kids burning plastic while they are taking apart the computers we send back when we are done, it is just a ridiculous statement to think that america is going to be put under these regulations when the whole world is as dirty as possible, yet america cannot go to work. thank you. host: that is lynn in bishop, california. let me add to that from j sanders who sends this question. out of the almost 30 million homes you say are at risk the next 30 years, how many do you estimate will actually burn over that time? guest: our model and analysis allows us to do that type of

risk analysis but we are looking at that and releasing our report in q4 around the consequences. our first report and calculations are around exposure and the likelihood of flames to make it to that property and the subsequent events that could take place. our next report will be around acres burned, property is expected to be impacted on an annual basis and what that would be in 30 years. you are correct. we are looking at how many have the risk of wildfire making it to the home and then there would be a smaller number of actual properties or structures that would burn down or forecasted to be burned down on any given year. that is what we are looking at with our academic partners and our internal staff. host: who uses your data, your information? guest: first and foremost, we want our data to be used by as many people as possible.

we have a great partnership with realtor.com. if you go on to realtor.com and look at any property for sale or not, there is an environmental risk section. if you open that up, our flood data is there that could tell you the likelihood of the home to flood today and over a 30 year period and fire factor, the likelihood of being in a wildfire today and over 30 years. both of those if you want to learn more link back to riskfactor.com to give you the full picture. consumer sites like that, other sites integrate our data but then we have partners whether it is on the local level, state level or federal level that are using our data and publishing reports. epa published a report with our flood data. south carolina is using our data as well.

there is everything from all the different levels of government using that to commercial entities like morningstar, large investment firms looking at what risk looks like with our data as well. host: rich in marion, ohio. good morning. caller: great conversation. good morning. great conversation. the idea that we are not logging enough and avoiding tires by logging more seems like a winning solution. the other thing i would like to know is a tree that is 30 years old versus 100 years old, how much better does it do for the environment? it cleans the air better, healthier lung. it would be curious to see what difference it could make. the other one is we used to have

fire tires in pennsylvania. someone would look over the hill and see where a fire was starting. i am wondering if we could use drones to keep track of these fires and catch them when they are earlier starting rather than later on. the other is between asphalt or metal roofs. what is -- people should look at that before they build houses. the other is how much to the insurance companies not give the right rate of dangers and then people build in flood areas because somebody else is paying the insurance to cover these people on flood zones? i will hang up and listen to the answers. bye. guest: bunch of great questions. one of the things you brought up his older growth trees versus younger trees. the difference obviously is one can consume a lot more carbon

and actually clean the air as you talk about lower emissions. older trees, the more mature trees are more valuable than smaller saplings that need to grow into older trees. definitely a big difference. from a logging perspective or value perspective let your talking about there are different trade-offs. definitely something where we want to keep as many of these old-growth trees around that help us with the issue around co2 and ensuring these issues do not get worse. you then went into things like how combustible is a certain type of roof? like you pointed out there are metal roofs which are great because they do not combust, and then there are cedar shake roofs, all of them have different combustion points. we have seen great homebuilding standards put in place to ensure that we have hardened homes that

are new built. but the hard part are the existing structures. if you already have your home in place and it is made of combustible material, what do you do? one of the best things you can do is what is called remove defensible space. what is defensible space? well, that is anything that can combust within 50 feet of your home. if you have a bunch of trees and shrubs in your backyard touching your home, they look beautiful but that is one of the top reasons why homes start on fire. the fire gets to the property, something else starts on fire beside the home, and then the heat and intensity because the structure to combust. that is one of the things you want to look at the most outside of things like your roof. the other thing that is really important is simple solutions like covering your eaves. fires are popping out in front

of the fire and covering homes with embers. one of the things we want to see all the time is those embers get sucked into the airflow into the attic. when you have an amber go up into a home -- ember go up into a home it will burn it from the inside out. once wildfire is in your house there is no such thing as a little bit of wildfire in your home like water and flooding. once it is in there, our homes have combustible things whether it is pillows, blankets, whatever it may be. that is where you see the biggest risk. but you can cover those eaves with cheap metal mesh. these are the types of solutions you want to think about when looking at your home and how you mitigate against potential risks from wildfires. host: al in watertown, tennessee. caller: thank you.

couple of questions and a comment. first, is first street foundation been approved as a 501 with 990. guest: we are. caller: they are not showing up on the irs website. are you still associated with the company you lobbied for? the reason i'm bringing this up is this guy is talking about root lines and that sort of thing. we need to back up and find out what his intentions are. i have insured a $20 million home from the fires in new mexico and the insurance companies how to quantify risk.

this guys talking about like nobody but him and this group can help you figure out your risk file when insurance companies make a living doing that every day. tell us about your funding and who gives you your money and where does it go? guest: i am not sure why you're having computer problems looking up the 990, but it is there if you want to look for it. we have great donors from grandson foundation, 2040 foundation, high tide foundation. all of that is publicly available information. why they give us the money is we believe in the scientific method, peer-reviewed process at open transparency. they are also in the scientific journals we publish. i am not sure what your problem is with our mythological approach -- methodological approach. i am not saying insurance

companies do not know how to quantify risk. they just look at a portfolio of risk, how likely is a structure to be impacted. if i am ensuring millions of structures, how likely is a bunch to get impacted and i have to pay out? it is catastrophic model, a different one than we created. the reason is because you are looking at balancing risk as an insurance company. if i want an insurer to make sure that i don't have maximum loss, which is what insurance companies do, i am going to say, i don't want to ensure homes riverside each other because of something happens -- right beside each other because of something happens, i have to pay them all out. i have a balanced portfolio and i use that in pricing insurance. that is different than looking at the risk to my usual home and

thinking about risk for just that structure. the insurance view is completely different from what we created. we created a view for the homeowner or homebuyer. host: california, john, good morning. caller: good morning. let me put the tv on hold. i live in a national forest and i can say our federal, state and local management policies have exacerbated this problem. things are definitely changing. we see more prescribed burns, more enforcement of cutting brush around the properties and whatnot. since so much of this has been proven by climate change, what can your organization do for us to help take this insurance risk

and spread it out over a greater population base? right now, our insurance costs are just killing us here. i have a 2000 square-foot home and i am paying over $6,000 a year for it. i have 800 square-foot rental unit and they are over $3000 a year for each one of them. it is killing me and they -- i can remove all vegetation within 100 feet of every structure, i can park a fire truck in my driveway and it makes no difference to the insurance companies. what can we do and what can your organization do to help us lobbied these insurance companies to get our costs down and help address this problem? i will sit back and listen. guest: great question and i am sorry you have to pay so much

for the insurance. that is where we see the risk increasing over time and the premiums increasing with it. the insurance companies know the risk that exists within the portfolio. one of two things has to happen. we either have to lower the risk because there are better treatments or ability to mitigate risk from the state and local governments and the federal government, or we have to figure out better home treatment ratings for insurance and i know there is a group, ibhb, about how to create certification programs to do the things you're talking about so that you actually get a discount within your insurance. i removed defensible space, i have done this checklist of items, i have a certain type of roof so then you can qualify to have a cheaper insurance than somebody not taking the same steps and not ensuring that you have a woodpile beside your home

or those types of things that add to risk. there are groups working on this because it is such a large problem like you are saying where you have these increasing premiums year on year on year and it becomes unaffordable or untenable for the vast majority of us. then you are left in a difficult spot because you have to have wildfire insurance as part of your homeowners insurance if you are going to have a federally backed mortgage. it is a mandated thing you can make. there are groups trying to do the same thing. what we are hoping it will do is inform these discussions. if we know where these pockets of risk are, we can have a conversation and talk about the solutions you are looking for. that is the hope of what we are doing at first street foundation. host: mario, farmington, new mexico. caller: how are you doing today? host: doing well. caller: what i was calling about is i was wondering if there are any studies that have been taken

on the type of roofs people put on their house, how much that reflects back into the atmosphere that could because in global warming or something like that? i mean, everything is white and white reflects heat. even solar panels reflect heat. i am wondering if that could be causing part of the global warming for even asphalting our roads and gravel your property. you can walk out and feel heat coming off of it. host: let's take those points. matthew eby. guest: i am not sure of studies related to that. most of the heat trapping that is the big concern is around the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. less of the items on the ground and more of the items in the air. think of it like a pollution blanket where he is coming in

but it is not able to get out. very akin to when you are in your car with the windows up on a hot summer day. it gets very hot because the heat comes in and it can got out -- get out. that is what we are seeing with the greenhouse gas emissions less so from the reflections or the heat. host: matthew eby, thank you for the conversation this morning. we appreciate it. if you can find the organization atthis is about 45 minutes.

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