Over the past two decades, a staggering 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a large wildfire. Most of those residents would have had to evacuate, and many would have been exposed to smoke and emotional trauma from the fire.

Nearly 600,000 of them were directly exposed to the fire, with their homes inside the wildfire perimeter.

Those statistics reflect how the number of people directly exposed to wildfires more than doubled from 2000 to 2019, my team’s new research shows.

But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires.

. . .

Recent research published in June 2023 shows that almost all of the increase in California’s burned area in recent decades has been due to anthropogenic climate change – meaning climate change caused by humans.

. . .