2020 was a catastrophic year for wildfires across the U.S. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported that almost 60,000 fires ran rampant across more than 9 million acres in the U.S. last year, nearly 1.5 times the 10-year average of 6.6 million acres. Not only this, California saw its first-ever “gigafire,” a devastating single blaze spanning over 1,000,000 acres—an area larger than Rhode Island.
Environmental experts tell us that the changing climate will only make matters worse and a nightmare scenario for everyone, not least for electric utilities in the affected areas. We’ve written before about how utility practices such as powerline inspection and management have been impacted by and impact preventative and reactive wildfire efforts, but that was at the height of the crisis.
