SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Two of California's largest wildfire incidents in 2021 cost fire agencies more than $500 million apiece to suppress, and a third cost more than a quarter-million dollars to fight, according to new federal data.
The massive Dixie Fire, which burned from mid-July through late October in Northern California, cost an estimated $637 million to combat, according to an annual report from the National Interagency Fire Center.
The Beckwourth Fire Complex, which scorched 106,000 acres from July to September in Plumas National Forest, cost about $543 million.
And the Caldor Fire, which burned more than 220,000 acres in El Dorado County along Highway 50 and into the Lake Tahoe Basin, cost $271 million.
Those are just the suppression costs for fire agencies — they don't reflect property damage, or base operating costs such as equipment. All three fires were fought by the U.S. Forest Service. Cal Fire battled the Caldor and Dixie fires in tandem with the Forest Service.
Only one other fire since the start of 2017 cost more than $200 million to suppress, according to previous years' reports: the 2018 Mendocino Complex, which, at 459,000 acres, was the largest wildfire in California's history until the 1,032,000-acre August Complex raged in 2020.
The Dixie Fire became California's second-largest wildfire, soaring to 963,000 acres.
But it cost more than quintuple the $116 million of the August Complex, which took a similar amount of time for crews to contain.
Last year's fires cost far more due to short-staffing at the U.S. Forest Service, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the suppression cost data. The Forest Service had to lean heavily on private contracts, which cost far more.
Fire agencies were stretched exceptionally thin last year amid a frenzy of extreme wildfires. Though the Caldor Fire started a month after Dixie, the two incidents burned simultaneously for more than two months. The Dixie Fire also overlapped with the Beckwourth Complex for about two months.
