When Wildfire Risk Rises, Tamazari Helps Utilities See and Act Faster
A Practical Approach to Wildfire Mitigation, Situational Awareness and Grid Resilience
Overview: Smaller utilities do not need billion-dollar grid-hardening programs to get serious about wildfire readiness. They need better visibility, targeted automation, stronger asset data and a practical path from wildfire risk to action.
Why Wildfire Mitigation is Especially Challenging for Small Utilities
For years, wildfire risk in the utility industry was treated as a Western problem, and often even more narrowly as a California problem. That framing no longer matches reality.
Approximately 115 million Americans live in counties with high wildfire risk, according to Wildfire Risk to Communities data.[1]
The National Interagency Fire Center’s June 2026 outlook makes the shift even clearer. Above-normal significant fire potential was forecast across much of the West in June, then expected to spread into areas including the Inland Northwest, northern Great Basin, southwest Oregon, northwest Washington, southeast Texas and western Louisiana later in the summer.[2]
Wildfire risk increasingly behaves less like a problem confined to a few traditionally fire-prone regions and more like an operational risk that emerges wherever weather, vegetation, infrastructure and system vulnerabilities converge. That matters because the utilities being asked to manage this growing risk are not all large investor-owned utilities with dedicated wildfire departments and mature grid-hardening programs.
Many are smaller electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, tribal-area systems and public power providers operating with limited budgets and lean crews.
Fire does not care whether an asset belongs to a large investor-owned utility, a city utility or a rural cooperative. A smaller utility may serve fewer customers, but it can still operate hundreds or thousands of miles of overhead line across dry vegetation, steep terrain, remote roads and difficult-to-access rights-of-way.
That changes what an effective wildfire strategy has to look like.
Wildfire Investment Should Follow Wildfire Risk
Not every circuit, asset or mile of distribution line carries the same wildfire exposure.
Electric Power Engineers cites PG&E data showing that approximately 95% of its wildfire risk was concentrated in just 22% of its distribution line miles.[3]
The lesson for smaller utilities is not to reproduce PG&E's investment program. It is to focus resources where failure is most likely—or where the consequences would be greatest.
That requires bringing together information such as asset condition, vegetation exposure, historical faults, inspection findings, weather conditions, terrain and proximity to critical infrastructure.
Then, small utilities can start identifying where several risk factors overlap. When considered collectively, factors like aging equipment, dense vegetation, wind exposure, historical faults, difficult terrain and proximity to critical infrastructure help identify where a failure could have the greatest consequences.
Once those areas of risk are visible, grid-hardening decisions become much more practical. At the asset level, that might mean replacing high-risk fuses, connectors, clamps, insulators or damaged equipment. And at the line level, covered conductor or selective undergrounding can be concentrated on particularly exposed segments.
SCADA and Automation Turn Visibility Into Action
Understanding where risk is concentrated is only part of wildfire readiness. Utilities also need real-time situational awareness and the ability to respond as conditions change. Reclosers are a good example.
During normal conditions, automatic reclosing supports reliability. During extreme fire weather, repeatedly energizing a faulted line can increase ignition risk. Fast-trip and one-shot settings give utilities another option. Southern California Edison saw a 54% reduction in wildfire ignitions on circuits with fast-trip enabled compared with circuits without it, according to EPE.[3]
But those strategies are far less useful when settings can only be changed manually in the field. Modern SCADA, remotely controlled devices and stronger system integrations give operators more options from the control room. They also reduce another common problem: fragmented information. Operators should not have to search one system for protection settings, another for asset condition, another for vegetation data and a PDF for wildfire procedures while conditions are deteriorating.
Connecting SCADA, GIS, OMS, inspection records, asset data and operational dashboards creates a stronger operating picture and shortens the distance between identifying risk and taking action.
Turn Wildfire Planning Into an Executable Modernization Roadmap
Wildfire mitigation plans are becoming more formal, but the document itself is not the goal.
A useful plan should help utilities answer practical questions:
When should reclosing be disabled?
Which circuits require additional patrols?
Which devices can be controlled remotely?
Where are the highest-risk assets?
What information does an operator need when conditions change?
Tamazari helps utilities answer those questions by connecting wildfire strategy to the systems behind day-to-day operations. Our capabilities include SCADA modernization, GIS and asset-data integration, operational dashboards and phased modernization roadmaps that help leaders determine how improvements can be sequenced around available resources.
The result is better information, faster response options and a practical path for reducing risk over time.
See how we helped a major PNW utility mitigate their wildfire risk through vegetation management
Sources
[1] Headwaters Economics, “Updates to Wildfire Risk to Communities reveal 115 million people living with high wildfire risk.”
[2] National Interagency Coordination Center, Predictive Services, National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook, June 2026 (June–September 2026 outlook), National Interagency Fire Center.
[3] Electric Power Engineers, “How Small Utilities Can Adapt Big Wildfire Strategies.”
