Preparing homes for wildfires is big business that's only getting started

Rich Snyder, who retired as the fire marshal of Sierra Madre, Calif., now works for Allied Disaster Defense, a California company that hardens homes against wildfire. One strategy is covering air vents with ember-blocking mesh. Liz Baker/NPR hide caption

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Rich Snyder, who retired as the fire marshal of Sierra Madre, Calif., now works for Allied Disaster Defense, a California company that hardens homes against wildfire. One strategy is covering air vents with ember-blocking mesh.

Liz Baker/NPR

As the Blue Ridge Fire blazed across California's Orange County in 2020, O.P. Almaraz stared at the menacing glow on the horizon and evacuated his family to a hotel. The next morning, he walked out of his room into a jam-packed, buzzing, chaotic lobby.

"I thought, holy smokes, everyone is wondering if their house is going to make it, and there's so much uncertainty," he says. "And that's when I'm like, okay, I've got to commit to figuring out how can homes survive, so we're not just praying that our homes make it."

Almaraz — a longtime home-restoration expert whose crews clean and renovate homes a disaster — is now part of a nascent but fast-growing industry of wildfire preparedness and mitigation that includes everything from home retrofits to AI-powered smoke detectors.

. And, of course, the growing threat of climate-related weather disasters.

Allied Disaster Defense technician Teto Negrete covers air vents with a fine mesh intended to block wind-blown embers from entering the house in the event of a wildfire. Liz Baker/NPR hide caption

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Allied Disaster Defense technician Teto Negrete covers air vents with a fine mesh intended to block wind-blown embers from entering the house in the event of a wildfire.

Liz Baker/NPR

Extreme wildfires are burning . Cities unfamiliar with smoke . Wildfires have been , fueled in part by human-caused climate change. An homes in the U.S., valued at $1.3 trillion, now face wildfire risks.

"Now everybody is concerned, everybody is aware of wildfire," says Seth Schalet, CEO of the nonprofit Santa Clara County FireSafe Council. "And so there's a lot of folks jumping into that kind of home entrepreneurial market. ... It's kind of the wild west now."

AI powers new wildfire technology

Carsten Brinkschulte, the CEO of Germany-based Dryad Networks, holds up what looks like an oversized luggage tag. It's a solar-powered gas sensor that hangs on a tree trunk and tries to detect a fire while it's very small.

German startup Dryad makes AI-powered solar sensors that analyze gases in the air to detect a fire before it spreads. Dryad Networks hide caption

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German startup Dryad makes AI-powered solar sensors that analyze gases in the air to detect a fire before it spreads.

Dryad Networks

Dryad sells the sensors to cities and utilities — 10,000 of them since launch in January, he says — and has a a pilot program .

"I'm surprised, to be honest, that they're not more trials" with other companies, Brinkschulte says. "I would hope that there would be more Dryads. This is such a pressing problem that we need more competition."

He does have rivals, including a few U.S. firms. Funding from venture capital and the government is now flowing into wildfire prep technology. Companies are pitching high-end air filters and outdoor sprinkler systems to homeowners who can afford it.

Insurers canceled or declined to renew almost 242,000 "homeowners and dwelling fire policies" in 2021, according to the .

This particularly has affected people living in neighborhoods considered at high risk because they edge into wildlands, often called the WUI (pronounced "wooey" for "wildland-urban interface"). Federal that close to a third of the U.S. population now lives in these communities.

Some insurance companies give people a break if they invest in home hardening. These are long-recommended techniques: fire-resistant roofs, covered gutters, no plants or mulch within 5 feet of the house, mesh on air vents that can stop embers from flying inside.

Former firefighter April Schwartz dons a backpack sprayer full of fire retardant to spray the landscaping around a home in Sierra Madre, Calif. Liz Baker/NPR hide caption

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Former firefighter April Schwartz dons a backpack sprayer full of fire retardant to spray the landscaping around a home in Sierra Madre, Calif.

Liz Baker/NPR

Almaraz's firm offers to do it all or teach people to do it themselves. He says very few crews offer comprehensive wildfire home prep yet. And so, his company has started to train other contractors, even eyeing a franchise to other Western states by next year.

"We as a society are just starting to accept this notion that there is some degree of accountability on us as individual homeowners for living in these risk areas," says Kimiko Barrett, wildfire research and policy analyst at the nonprofit Headwaters Economics. "Because the scale of risk is so great now, we cannot avoid it."

. The liquid sloshing in a jug on her back is similar to what fire crews might drop from the sky.

"We almost can't keep up," Schwartz says about demand for her company's home-hardening and fire-retardant services. "But that's a good thing."

As the risk of wildfires reaches new places, the business is only heating up.