Wildfire Risk and Data Center Siting: Hazard Maps, Power Shutoffs and WUI Codes

Wildfire reaches a data center through four separate paths. The first is direct exposure: flames, radiant heat and windblown embers reaching the building, the generator yard, fuel tanks and cooling equipment. The second is smoke, which loads air intakes and filters and can affect staff. The third is the power supply: lines that burn, and lines the utility switches off before a fire starts. The fourth is access, since closed roads can stop fuel deliveries, staff shifts and repair crews.

Of these, the power supply usually matters most. A modern campus is built of noncombustible materials on cleared, paved ground, which limits direct exposure, but its transmission feed may cross miles of forest, brush or grassland. That is why wildfire belongs in the power review as much as the environmental one.

Fire counts and burned area move independently. NIFC lists 77,850 fires but about 5.1 million acres for 2025, against fewer fires and more acreage in 2024.⁶ NASA notes that the area burned each year appears to have increased since the 1980s.⁷ Wildfire is one of several hazards in natural hazard risk for data centers, and longer-term warming is covered in climate change and future heat risk.

The national starting point is Wildfire Risk to Communities, built by the USDA Forest Service under Section 210 of the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act and launched in 2020.³ Its main measures are wildfire likelihood, the annual probability of wildfire at a location, and risk to homes, a relative measure of the risk a house would face if one existed there.³

The data behind the tool is published by the Forest Service as national raster datasets. The 2024 version covers all lands in the United States; its burn probability uses LANDFIRE 2020 fuels and represents conditions as of the end of 2020, while its fire intensity layers were updated for disturbances through 2022.⁹ Fires, fuel treatments and new development since then are not reflected, so a recent burn scar can make a site look riskier or safer than it is today.

These tools were built for homes and communities. A data center sits on graded, mostly paved ground with managed landscaping, so its own exposure is usually lower than a house at the same spot. What the maps do capture well is the surrounding landscape, which is what the serving lines and access roads pass through.

A public safety power shutoff (PSPS) is a planned de-energization of lines during high winds and dry fuels, to keep utility equipment from starting a fire. The California Public Utilities Commission has stated that a decision to initiate a PSPS event must always be a measure of last resort.⁸ Its rules also expanded the category of critical facilities and infrastructure that receive advance notice and help assessing their need for backup generation during a shutoff.⁸

The practice is no longer confined to California. By late 2024, shutoffs had spread to the Mountain West and to states such as Hawaii and Texas, and utilities in Idaho and eastern Washington used them for the first time that year.¹ Xcel Energy’s first Colorado shutoff came in April 2024.¹ In April 2026, Xcel warned about 7,100 customers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley of a planned shutoff and said it would use more sensitive power line safety settings statewide.¹⁴ By early 2026, reporting described proactive shutoffs at utilities from Hawaii to Texas, with shutoffs or warnings in Nevada and Wyoming.²

Shutoffs can be frequent in high-risk territory. PacifiCorp’s wildfire monitoring center in Medford, Oregon, tracked 863 fires in its first months of operation in 2025, and 71 of them led to emergency power shutoffs.¹⁵ Fast-trip or enhanced safety settings, which de-energize a line automatically when something contacts it, add a second source of outages in fire season.¹⁴

For a data center, the practical questions are how often the serving circuits have been de-energized, how long events last, and whether the transmission feed is exposed or only the local distribution. Backup generation and fuel then have to cover shutoffs as well as faults; see backup generators and fuel sizing and redundant utility feeds.

Wildland-urban interface codes set construction and site rules in mapped hazard areas. The 2024 International Wildland-Urban Interface Code regulates the vegetation buffer around buildings, sets ignition-resistant construction requirements and covers emergency access, water supply, fire protection, automatic suppression and safe storage.¹⁶ Adoption is local or statewide and varies widely, so the first question is whether the jurisdiction has adopted any WUI code at all.

California is the most developed example. On February 26, 2025, the state adopted the 2024 IWUIC as the basis for the 2025 California Wildland-Urban Interface Code in Title 24, Part 7.¹⁰ CAL FIRE also released updated Local Responsibility Area fire hazard severity zone maps in 2025, which local agencies adopt by ordinance.⁴ Counties then apply California Building Code Chapter 7A, the state’s ignition-resistant construction chapter, in high and very high zones; Humboldt County’s code is one example.¹¹

• Envelope: noncombustible or ignition-resistant roofs, walls and vents that keep embers out.¹⁶
• Vegetation: a managed buffer around buildings, yards and fuel tanks, maintained for the life of the site.
• Access and water: fire apparatus roads and fire flow, which can affect campus layout and setbacks.¹⁶
• Storage: rules on how fuel and combustible materials are kept outdoors.

For a data center, these rules mostly affect cost and layout rather than feasibility. They should be confirmed with the local building and fire officials alongside the general requirements in building and fire codes for data centers.

Smoke can spread well beyond the fire itself, so a site away from fire-prone land can still be affected. ASHRAE Guideline 44-2024 addresses protecting building occupants from smoke during wildfire and prescribed burn events, including smoke management strategies and filtration.⁵ General building advice during heavy smoke is to reduce outdoor air intake and upgrade filtration.⁵

Data centers that rely on outside air for cooling feel this most. Air-side economizers bring in large volumes of outdoor air, and concern about exposing IT equipment to outdoor particles has long slowed their adoption. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that when improved filtration is combined with an economizer, indoor-to-outdoor concentration ratios for most measured particle types were similar to conventional designs without economizers.¹² That study predates recent smoke seasons, so the design should plan for closing outdoor air dampers and running mechanical cooling during heavy smoke.

The practical effect is a requirement for full mechanical cooling capacity, filter stock and a smoke operating mode. The cooling trade-offs by climate are covered in climate, cooling and site selection.

A utility’s wildfire mitigation plan (WMP) is the best public record of how it will operate lines in fire season. According to a 2025 PNNL presentation, nine states have passed laws requiring utilities to prepare WMPs, two more states proposed such laws in 2025 that did not advance, and utilities elsewhere prepare them voluntarily.¹³ Cumulatively, 13 states had addressed parts of utility wildfire risk in legislation.¹³

These plans typically describe high-risk areas, line hardening and undergrounding, vegetation management, and the criteria for shutoffs and sensitive relay settings. Read with an interconnection request, they help answer whether a new transmission line or substation will itself run through high-hazard land, and whether the utility will build it to a hardened standard.

Wildfire risk also feeds the case for on-site power. Some developers in fire-prone territory size on-site generation or microgrids and battery storage to ride through multi-day shutoffs. That choice has air permit, fuel supply and cost consequences, so it should follow, not precede, an honest estimate of shutoff exposure.

1. 01Pull wildfire likelihood and risk data for the parcel and a buffer around it, noting the data vintage.³⁹
2. 02Check the state hazard zone and whether the jurisdiction has adopted a WUI code or Chapter 7A equivalent.⁴¹¹
3. 03Read the serving utility’s wildfire mitigation plan and ask for the shutoff and fast-trip history of the circuits that would serve the site.¹³¹⁴
4. 04Ask whether the planned feed is classed as critical infrastructure for shutoff notifications, where that category exists.⁸
5. 05Size backup fuel and mechanical cooling for multi-day shutoffs and heavy smoke.⁵
6. 06Map evacuation and fuel delivery routes, and whether a single road serves the site.

Wildfire findings go into the same comparison as power, fiber and land cost in the due diligence checklist, and western sites have their own context in California and CAISO site selection. East of the Rockies, tornadoes often matter more; see tornado and high-wind risk. Our methodology treats wildfire mainly as a power reliability and operating-cost input. If you want a parcel screened, you can get a site reviewed.