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Energy & Utilities  Process Improvement

How utilities are modernizing wildfire mitigation programs

10/13/2026

by Alan Hernandez and Josh Key

Imagine this scene from your favorite action movie: alarms blaring, people scattering, and the clock ticking to make the right decision. Wildfire response can create similar pressure. The difference is that the most successful organizations do not rely on last-minute heroics. They rely on preparation.

For many years, wildfire mitigation was viewed primarily as a West Coast issue. Today, that perspective has changed dramatically. Events such as the Marshall Fire in Colorado, the Maui wildfires, and the Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas Panhandle have demonstrated that wildfire risk is increasingly a national concern with significant implications for utilities, regulators, insurers, and the communities they serve.

For utilities, the risk extends far beyond ignition prevention. Wildfires can threaten public safety, disrupt electric service, increase financial and regulatory exposure, and erode customer trust. At the same time, utilities face rising demand, accelerating electrification, infrastructure expansion, and more frequent extreme weather events. The question is no longer whether wildfire risk exists, but how utilities can proactively manage that risk while continuing to provide safe and affordable service.

Wildfire mitigation spans beyond reliability

Leading utilities are beginning to view wildfire mitigation through more than just a reliability lens. While reliability measures performance under normal conditions, resilience measures how effectively an organization prepares for, responds to, and recovers from disruption.

Consequently, wildfire risk is not a one-time planning exercise. Environmental conditions, infrastructure health, customer growth, and weather patterns are constantly changing. The most effective programs continuously evaluate risk and connect asset intelligence, operational decision-making, customer impacts, and investment priorities into a unified strategy. As utilities face growing pressure to serve expanding communities, electrification initiatives, and emerging loads such as data centers, resilience is becoming a defining measure of utility performance. How do they plan for the day they hope never comes?

How do we do this?

• Established and clearly defined standard operating procedures (SOPs) are key to preventing chaos. Knowing how and when your organization plans, enacts, and exits wildfire events, such as responding to an active wildfire incident, will set your organization up to be resilient against these unfavorable conditions.

• Resiliency means being proactive. When preparing for wildfire season, consider establishing pre-defined zones of protection based on burnable vs. non-burnable terrain. This practice enables your organization to prioritize capital investment, such as deploying switching devices to isolate sections of the feeder, preventing a full feeder blackout during Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events, and minimizing customer outages.

Who do we engage with?

• Wildfire mitigation programs do not just touch one or two teams. They touch everyone. This extends beyond internal stakeholders to vendors as well. Building strong relationships matters both from an emergency response standpoint and as a strategic effort, since everyone is impacted by wildfires. What happens if the wildfire team’s fire simulation tool goes down? Who do you contact? Do you contact IT or, if the tool is vendor-owned, do you contact the vendor directly? This is exactly why clearly defined operational protocols matter.

• Cross-functional coordination extends beyond internal teams to neighboring emergency management personnel as well. That said, utilities should stay within their lane. Their role in these partnerships is to keep the power on, not to perform emergency response activities themselves.

Are we communicating properly?

• There is an art to communicating with customers about de-energization. Notify too early, and customers may lose confidence in the timeline. Notify too late, and customers may panic or lack time to execute their personal emergency plans. Getting this timing right is central to effective PSPS communication.

• Being a safety partner with communities matters for both customer safety and grid resiliency. Since roughly 90% of wildfires are human-caused, investments in grid hardening alone are not enough. Utilities should also engage directly with the communities most likely to be an ignition source, educating them on prevention.

How do we stay prepared?

• A Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP) is more than a filing. It is more than a checklist, more than a compliance document, and more than a once-every-three-year exercise. When done well, it becomes the playbook that helps a utility anticipate risk, coordinate across functions, and respond confidently when conditions change.

From compliance to capability

Building a mature wildfire mitigation program that meets and exceeds regulatory obligations requires much more than deploying new technology or documenting regulatory requirements. Success hinges on the effective alignment of people, processes, governance, and technology around a common operating model.

Our experts supported the development of an operational wildfire response playbook, which evolved into a broader transformation effort spanning PSPS readiness, governance, stakeholder communications, regulatory compliance, and enterprise-wide coordination. As wildfire risk evolved, so did the program through enhanced operating procedures, strengthened governance, improved reporting, and increased organizational readiness. Two key lessons were learned from this effort:

1. Governance structure should be formalized: To improve decision-making and accountability, a formal governance structure should be established. A standardized data collection and reporting process should improve visibility into mitigation activities and program performance. Training programs should be developed to reinforce readiness and ensure operational consistency across teams.
2. Technology remains a critical enabler: Advanced weather intelligence, analytics, and risk modeling provide operators with unprecedented visibility into changing conditions. However, technology alone does not create resilience. Utilities must possess the operational flexibility, governance structures, and organizational readiness necessary to act on those insights when it matters most.

Ultimately, wildfire mitigation is not simply a compliance effort. It is an enterprise resilience capability that enables utilities to anticipate risk, make informed decisions during high-consequence events, and continue delivering safe and affordable service under increasingly challenging conditions.

Action-packed reactive wildfire mitigation work may appear to be the first line of defense, when in reality it’s the work that takes place before the alarms start blaring. Learn how your wildfire mitigation plan can go beyond compliance. Connect with a consultant today.

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