As Austin/Travis County heads into another scorching hot wildfire season, city and county leaders are sharing updates on community-wide preparedness efforts and emphasizing how individual Austinites can do their part. Local officials held a press conference on Tuesday to kick…
As Texas becomes hotter and drier, and urban sprawl grows, the state could see more days with an elevated risk for wildfires. So far this year, Austin has had five of these days, also known as red flag warning days,…
Austin plans to greatly expand the amount of land, and therefore homes, considered at risk of wildfire damage. City Council members are scheduled to discuss updating rules surrounding Austin’s WUI, or Wildland-Urban Interface, later this month. This is the area…
According to a CoreLogic Wildfire Risk Report conducted in 2024, Austin ranks fifth in the nation for cities most at risk for wildfires. The top four cities are all located in California. David Bock, senior wildfire mitigation specialist at the…
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Two items on today’s City Council agenda related to wildfire prevention have raised alarms among at least two community groups – the Save Our Springs Alliance and Community Not Commodity. The agenda indicates that the first item would allocate nearly…
Those who were in Austin in 2011 remember the tragic wildfires that hit Bastrop, Steiner Ranch and Spicewood that summer. The fires collectively burned through thousands of acres of land and destroyed over a thousand homes. “You can still drive…
Throughout her time on the dais, District 10 City Council Member Alison Alter has stressed the need for the city to understand and prepare to fight wildfires in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, which is the area between unoccupied land…
Ahead of national Wildfire Community Preparedness Day on May 4, the Public Safety Commission this week heard an update on how Austin is faring with its own community readiness efforts. The good news is that Austin leads the state in…
City Council on Thursday approved negotiation and execution of a contract for what Austin Energy describes as a powerful new tool to aid the utility in wildfire detection and response. The utility says it will use Pano AI technology to…
The public may not have noticed, but Austin-Travis County had 963 different brush and grass fire alarms in September, Assistant Fire Chief Andre de la Reza told members of the city’s Public Safety Commission on Monday. The department was able…
Mayor Kirk Watson and Travis County Judge Andy Brown on Tuesday declared a local state of emergency in response to the threat of wildfires. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott said that wildfires in 191 Texas counties “pose an imminent threat…
Lee esta historia en español Dry grass, wind and relatively low humidity mean a fire can spread easily and be difficult to control. All it takes is a spark from a metal lawnmower blade hitting a rock, a loose chain…
