This is an unapproved working prototype. It was built without the involvement or endorsement of the National Wildfire Alliance, the U.S. Wildfire Cost-Plus-Loss Economics Project, or anyone whose work it draws on — purely to show what their report-card work could become. All grades and dollar figures are illustrative. If anyone involved wants this taken down, it comes down immediately, no questions asked — contact us here.
Every fire on America's public forests — graded, mapped, and accounted for at its true cost. One living record, built on the shoulders of the people who have been saying this for fifteen years.
Built on the National Wildfire Alliance's Suppression Report Card and the 2009 U.S. Wildfire Cost-Plus-Loss Economics Project (Zybach, Dubrasich, Brenner & Marker). Their ideas; our prototype.
For fifteen years a handful of foresters have argued one thing the agencies won't print: the reported cost of a wildfire is a fraction of the real one. The $1–2 billion in suppression cost you read about each year hides $20–100 billion in actual losses — homes, health, watersheds, soil, wildlife, timber, recreation, heritage. The 2009 Cost-Plus-Loss Project built a checklist and a ledger to count all of it. Nobody ever funded it to run at scale. This is what it looks like when someone finally does.
The report cards — every fire on one map, one ruler
Marker color = stewardship grade · size = acreage · ▲ = fire. Click any fire for its full report card and cost-plus-loss ledger.
How a fire is graded
Four principles → the letter grade
First, put out the fire. Decisive initial attack, not "managed" spread. NWA · Carroll
Treat the land before it burns. Thinning and prescribed fire so a start doesn't become a megafire. our draft
Count the full cost. Report cost-plus-loss honestly, not just suppression spend. our draft
Principle 1 is the National Wildfire Alliance's (Frank Carroll's First, Put Out the Fire!). Principles 2–4 are our draft stand-ins — the NWA's actual four principles drop in here the moment you give us the wording.
A grade is a finding, not an opinion
Each principle is scored 0–100 against the public record, and the four average to a letter. Every score links to its evidence. And behind every grade sits the cost-plus-loss ledger — the eleven categories the 2009 project named, tallied as a range of values for that fire. The grade tells you how well it was handled; the ledger tells you what it actually cost.
A ≥85 · B ≥75 · C ≥65 · D ≥55 · F below 55.
What exists today — and what this could be
The NWA today
A designed one-page report card, graded by hand, one fire at a time. Strong and credible — but static, and it lives as a file.
The 2009 Ledger
A rigorous cost-plus-loss checklist and econometric ledger — peer-reviewed, eleven categories. Never funded to run at scale; it sits in a 2009 PDF.
This prototype
Their ideas, made living: every fire mapped, graded, and costed in one comparable, sourced, searchable archive that anyone can add to — and that gets stronger with each fire.
This was built for you.
If you're with the National Wildfire Alliance, the Cost-Plus-Loss Project, Evergreen, or you just fight and study these fires — this is yours to take. Bring your real principles, your real numbers, your real cases, and in an afternoon you're years ahead of a Canva one-pager. Or tell us to delete it. Either way, you've now seen it. Let's talk →