By Laura Zuckerman
(Reuters) - The number of homes at risk from wildfires in western U.S. states jumped 62 percent in the past year as more properties were developed in fire-prone areas, according to a report released on Thursday.
About 1.2 million homes valued at more than $189 billion are at high to very high risk from wildfires in California and a dozen other Western states, according to CoreLogic Inc, a data and analytics company.
The study comes near the close of a 2013 fire season that saw the most destructive fire in Colorado history, marked one of the largest burns on record in California, caused the deaths of 33 firefighters and strained U.S. Forest Service firefighting resources.
The report highlighted a boom in construction in areas located between towns and hinterlands as a key new risk factor that drove the number of homes at risk up sharply from last year when the report estimated 740,000 homes worth $136 billion were threatened.
"As cities grow in population, they tend to expand outward into formerly undeveloped wild land areas," Thomas Jeffery, senior hazard scientist for CoreLogic Spatial Solutions said in a statement.
"Wind-blown embers can travel ... and ignite homes located far away from an actual fire," he said.
