Utilities across the Western states face unprecedented wildfire-related liabilities, service interruptions, and infrastructure damage. A fully deployed Business and Home Hardening workforce provides utilities with a scalable, community-aligned strategy to reduce ignition risk long before it interacts with power lines or equipment. By creating defensible spaces, hardening structures, and mitigating landscape vulnerabilities, communities directly shrink the geographic footprint of potential fire starts and spread patterns.
When utilities participate in shaping Business and Home Hardening standards—whether through technical input, inspection criteria, or data-sharing—they gain a direct risk-reduction tool that complements grid hardening, vegetation management, and new under-grounding initiatives. This reduces exposure to catastrophic losses, lowers legal and settlement costs, and strengthens utilities’ standing with regulators, local governments, and ratepayers.
A fully Hard-Hardened region is not only safer; it is more reliable. When wildfire risk decreases, system outages decline, restoration costs fall, and long-term capital planning becomes more predictable. Utilities benefit operationally, reputationally, and financially by supporting the growth of this new workforce and collaborative prevention system.