Changes

Wildfires over the last twenty years are becoming larger and more financial financially and materially devastating. There are multiple reasons for this, but compared to historical trends it might be show that fires were even larger prior to 1800fires may have still been generally larger than today. It is possible larger fires occurred because there was far less built-up area, with many more trees. While fire size generally declined over the 20th century, increasing urbanization has also led to more damage to property. In generalOver the late 20th century, and particularly over the last two decades, the spatial extent of fires has substantially increased as older growth forests have been left to thrive and climate change has contributed to more devastating fires. One improvement has been that safety has improved due to early warning detectionbecoming better in recent decades.