On Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026, more than 60,000 Spokane area residents lost their sense of security as they were evacuated from their homes to escape wildfires. No one had been expecting three fast-moving wildfires to overtake three suburban counties in Washington state.
Categorized as a complex fire, these individual ignitions—collectively known as the Spokane Area Fires—quickly became the most property-destructive in Washington state history. It took roughly two weeks for crews to reach substantial containment.
While the area had previously experienced wildfire, its blazes had never reached this level of destruction; Spokane County’s August 2023 Gray and Oregon Road Fires destroyed a combined total of roughly 366 homes, which was a fraction of this year’s fallout. Also, the majority of fires in Washington state history have occurred in forest areas, not dense residential or urban centers.
Burning outside of what many consider the “wildfire capital” of California, the Spokane Area Fires confirm that wildfire disasters are not predetermined by topography or geography alone.
For U.S. insurers, this demands a new strategy for evaluating wildfires on a national basis. Not just in California. And not even just for West Coast states.
To effectively respond to fire events that deviate sharply from historical trends, insurers must look beyond simple environmental burn potential. They need a deep understanding of wildfire risk versus conflagration risk—the threat of structure-to-structure ignition. With urban conflagration looming across the country, insurers can compound resilience by driving effective homeowner mitigation across their portfolios.
The factors driving the Spokane suburban fires
A combination of factors has played into the Spokane Area fires, primarily:
- The continuing global Super El Niño that has dried out the Pacific Northwest.
- Increased development in the regional Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)—the zone where housing meets flammable wildland vegetation.
In Spokane, residential construction has boomed exponentially since the 2023 fire. As a result, the area is experiencing wildland fires that have turned into rapid, structure-to-structure fires. Known as wildfire-induced conflagrations, these uncontrollable fires are fueled not by vegetation, but instead by the very housing material and manmade structures that make up the neighborhoods themselves.
Cotality has issued a preliminary loss estimate of $1 billion to $1.3 billion in insured losses from the three Spokane fires. This estimate, which accounts for both fire and smoke damage, amounts to more than quadruple the amount of the insurance payout from 2023.
While devastating, the exponentially higher Reconstruction Cost Value (RCV) makes sense: expanding construction into wildland areas puts far more housing directly in the path of wildfire. It’s an exposure many homebuyers overlook as they seek lower-cost housing deeper into the WUI.
Insurers everywhere must have a wildfire vs. conflagration analysis strategy
The WUI exists in every state, with residential construction creeping deeper into these zones, thereby increasing both wildfire and conflagration risk. Also, although standard insurance policies treat conflagrations and wildfires as one and the same, they are fundamentally distinct risks that demand separate evaluation. Differentiating the risks is essential for carrier exposure management, disaster preparation, and proactive mitigation:
- Wildfire risk: Driven by natural vegetation, local terrain, and wildland fuel loads.
- Conflagration risk: Occurs when a wildfire crosses into the built environment and feeds on structures and building materials. Conflagrations often lead to the historically large insured losses often noted in the industry. Wildfire and conflagration risk don’t always overlap. A home in a residential neighborhood that is not surrounded by much brush or timber will score low on traditional wildfire risk models yet could carry high conflagration risk if it sits tightly clustered among unhardened homes that lead back to that flammable vegetation.
Accurately identifying these distinct risks requires property-level detail rather than broad neighborhood-level scoring.
Why this distinction will matter more with each passing year
Conflagrations escalate rapidly and take longer to extinguish than wildfires that stay confined to more remote areas. With conflagrations, insurers face increased costs for remediation and rebuilding, as well as prolonged relocation and housing expenses (Additional Living Expenses, or ALE) for displaced families.
Differentiating between wildfire and conflagration risk enables carriers to better evaluate risk for portfolio exposure management. It also helps carriers promote targeted mitigation strategies because adequate wildfire mitigation for properties surrounded by dry grasslands is different than proper home-hardening for tightly clustered homes with high conflagration risk.
Out in the open, it’s all about wide defensible space and fuel breaks to push fast-moving grass fires away. In dense neighborhoods, it’s about structure-to-structure defense—focusing on zero-lot-line clearance, ember-proof vents, and non-combustible siding to stop house-to-house ignition.
Actionable strategies for comprehensive wildfire risk evaluation and mitigation
To navigate this changing risk landscape, insurers should implement three critical practices:
- Evaluate conflagration risk separately from traditional wildfire risk: Using separate, yet intersecting, assessment models for environment and structure allows underwriters to clearly see both threats without overcomplicating the workflow. Combining these assessments ensures a complete picture of total wildfire risk, capturing both vegetation-driven fire and structure-to-structure spread.
- Discuss the impacts of relevant home-hardening and mitigation with policyholders: These conversations can happen at policy initiation and renewal. Mitigation isn’t top of mind for homeowners when they’ve never been affected personally by fire. Insurers have the insights to inform policyholders of the relevant measures they can take to fortify their homes.
- Reward mitigation proactively, even without a state mandate: Offering financial incentives and policy credits for home hardening pays off, regardless of local regulatory requirements. Insurers cannot afford to wait for state mandates before providing incentives to policyholders to protect their properties.
Ultimately, these measures don’t just protect insurance portfolios: they build community resilience.
Mitigation saves properties, portfolios, and lives
Data proves that property mitigation yields significant loss reduction.
According to Cotality’s 2026 Wildfire Risk Report, an analysis of 6.8 million single-family residences in California shows that modeled loss costs fall exponentially as mitigation improves. Verified mitigation reduces expected losses by 78%, whereas unmitigated homes carry 10 times higher risk.
While California mandates policyholder credits for specific mitigation measures, many other states do not. Because homeowners are rarely inclined to spend extra money on structural modifications (especially after a major home purchase), carrier-driven incentives are crucial to driving proactive home hardening.
Insurers can only maintain long-term solvency by directly confronting the reality of evolving flame behavior.
Wildfire-induced conflagrations are no longer confined to California. Fire history shows that conflagrations occur even beyond the West Coast—and a Super El Niño, combined with continued development nationwide further into the WUI, should remind us that we never know how big a fire can become once it sparks.
Without a clear view of portfolio-wide fuel risks or the ability to identify and encourage resilient structures, an insurer is always just one conflagration away from catastrophic financial loss.
To learn more about nationwide wildfire and conflagration insights, read the latest Wildfire Risk Report from Cotality.
