Wildfire risk in the US is no longer confined to Western states, according to a new members-only Issues Brief from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), which found that extreme heat, drought conditions and continued population growth in wildfire-prone areas are driving elevated wildland fire exposure across multiple regions of the country, including the Southeast and Great Plains. For brokers in states that haven't historically factored wildfire into underwriting, this is worth treating as a prompt to check existing client books for a risk that may never have been assessed in the first place.
The brief found that more than 35,000 fires burned over three million acres nationwide during the first half of 2026, significantly exceeding 10-year averages for the same period. States including Florida, Georgia and Nebraska experienced record-setting wildfire activity, while Western states continued to face persistent threats driven by heat, drought and insufficient snowpack from the 2025-26 winter season.
"Wildfire is increasingly a national risk issue rather than a regional one," said Sean Kevelighan (pictured), CEO of Triple-I. He said that as populations continue to grow in wildfire-prone areas and weather conditions become more extreme, resilience and mitigation efforts are more important than ever for protecting lives, property and communities.
The brief highlighted new research showing that 42% of Western US land impacted by wildland fires between 2001 and 2024 burned during or immediately after a heat wave. Heat waves dry vegetation and the atmosphere, creating favorable conditions for wildfire ignition and spread, and the number of heat-wave days across Western forests has nearly doubled since 2001, amplifying wildfire risk.
While major wildfire events remain relatively rare, their impacts can be catastrophic, according to Craig Clements, professor of meteorology and director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San José State University and a Triple-I non-resident scholar.
"Catastrophic wildfire is only 1% of all fires," Clements said, adding that it takes just one day that is especially windy or dry for a fire to start in the right place at the wrong time and spread out of control.
The findings arrive as California's insurance market continues adjusting to the fallout from years of severe wildfire losses, a preview of the pressures other states may face as fire risk spreads. The state's FAIR Plan, its insurer of last resort, saw its total insured exposure grow from roughly $50 billion in 2018 to $458 billion in 2024, as private insurers pulled back from high-risk areas.
The California Department of Insurance has reported that insurers non-renewed more than 2.8 million homeowners policies in fire-prone zip codes between 2020 and 2025, while January 2025's Palisades Fire alone is estimated to have caused between $30 billion and $50 billion in insured losses.
In response, California enacted a series of reforms effective January 1, 2026, including Senate Bill 495, which requires insurers to pay a share of contents coverage to total-loss survivors without a detailed inventory, and Senate Bill 547, which extends a one-year non-renewal moratorium to commercial policies following a declared disaster.
Assembly Bill 226 allows the FAIR Plan to access catastrophe bonds, while Senate Bill 429 authorizes a public wildfire catastrophe model intended to bring more transparency to how insurers assess and price fire risk.
For brokers operating in Florida, Georgia, Nebraska or other states now posting record wildfire activity, the practical concern isn't just future exposure - it's whether existing property books already have gaps that have gone unnoticed simply because wildfire was never part of the underwriting conversation in these regions. A policy written without wildfire specifically in mind may still respond to a fire loss, but it may also carry sublimits, exclusions or valuation assumptions that were never stress-tested against this kind of event. Reviewing client portfolios for wildfire-specific language, rather than assuming standard property coverage already accounts for it, is a concrete step brokers in newly affected states can take now, ahead of the next renewal cycle rather than after a loss exposes the gap.
The report also found that wildfire exposure continues to grow as more Americans move into the wildland-urban interface, the zone where developed areas meet undeveloped vegetation.
Approximately one-third of all homes in the continental US are located in these areas, representing more than 46 million homes exposed to wildfire risk. California remains the state with the largest concentration of homes facing extreme wildfire exposure.
The findings suggest that underwriting models and mitigation strategies developed in response to California's wildfire crisis may become increasingly relevant to insurers operating in states not traditionally associated with major fire activity.
As states like Florida, Georgia and Nebraska post record wildfire seasons, carriers and regulators elsewhere may face similar pressure to adopt catastrophe modeling, mitigation incentives and non-renewal safeguards already being tested in California's market, particularly as heat waves become more frequent and prolonged nationwide.
