SCIENCE ALERT - Wildfires that ravage developed areas of the US tend to hit a particular kind of neighborhood: suburban, owner-occupied, and relatively well-off, new research has found.
Wildfires in the US aren't just a problem for communities near remote forests – they are literally in people's backyards, especially for people who live on hillsides near wildlands on the outskirts of urban areas – which is exactly where rich neighborhoods tend to be.
"These urban fires consistently occur in suburban, high-income, owner-occupied development," says co-author Dion Kucera, an urban ecologist at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).