Two and a half decades of United States wildfire burn zone disaster data, 2000-2025

Growing wildfire frequency and urban development expanding into fire-prone areas have heightened wildfire risk for wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities. When burn zones come near or cross into communities, the heat, flames, and smoke can harm human health—directly or via psychosocial stressors—to the point of becoming a disaster. We harmonized six wildfire datasets to create the first U.S.-wide spatial dataset of wildfire burn zone disasters. Our criteria for a wildfire burn zone disaster were wildfires that burned near a community (≥96 people per km² or met WUI criterion) and resulted in ≥1 civilian fatality, ≥1 destroyed structure, or received federal disaster declaration. We identified 6,212 U.S. wildfire burn zone disasters between 2000–2025. The annual number of these disasters ranged between 61 in 2001 and 570 in 2011 (median = 217), with an increasing trend over the study period. California had the highest number of wildfire burn zone disasters (n = 878, 14.1%). These data may inform demographic, economic, and population health research, as well as policymaking and resource allocation.