Wildfire Risk Is Now a Management Problem, Not Just a Safety Problem

For years, wildfire planning sat in a few boxes. Safety handled emergency response. Vegetation teams cleared rights-of-way. Regulatory staff handled filings. Finance dealt with recovery after the damage was done. That division no longer fits the facts. In the U.S. electric power industry, wildfire exposure now reaches capital planning, liability, insurance, credit, rate design, field operations, communications, and how boards judge management. It is no longer enough to treat wildfire as a seasonal hazard that can be managed with a few operating procedures and a public update when the weather turns bad.