Wildfire destruction by the numbers
Wildfires have burned more than 230 million acres nationwide since 1983— that’s more than twice the area of California. They’re burning more land on average ever since federal fire agency tracking began in the 1980s. How many wildfires happen in the US, and how have they changed over time?
- Wildfires burned an average of over 7 million acres of land each year of the last decade. However, last year, wildfires burned 5.1 million acres, down 43% from 2024’s total (8.9 million).
- Wildfires burned in every state last year, but they burned the most acres in Alaska (1.01 million). California had the second-most acres destroyed: 505,994.
- However, looking at acres burned per 10,000 acres in a state tells a different story. After adjusting for state sizes, Oklahoma had the most destruction: 68 acres burned for every 10,000. Florida had the second-most (55.5 burned acres per 10,000), while Washington had the third (54.1 acres).
- Costs for containing and extinguishing fires, known as fire suppression, have risen even when adjusting for inflation. In 2001, suppression costs were less than $2.0 billion (adjusted to 2024 dollars). Annual costs have averaged $3.8 billion in the five most recent years of data.
- In 2025, wildfires damaged a reported 18,385 structures. Nearly 90% of these buildings, about 16,324, were in Southern California.
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How much does your state pay for Medicaid?
Medicaid provides free or low-cost health coverage through both federal and state funding, but not every state splits the check equally. In fiscal year 2024, states covered 35.2% of Medicaid costs on average, while the federal government picked up the remaining 64.8%. Last year’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could change those numbers.
- In FY 2024, Massachusetts paid the largest share of Medicaid costs of any state (43.8%), followed by Wyoming (43.3%) and New Hampshire (43.2%). The smallest state share was New Mexico’s 21.9%.
- A state’s share of Medicaid spending is based on a federal formula tied to per-person income. The idea is to provide more federal support to states with average per-person incomes below the national average. This is called the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP for short).
- The FMAP is just a baseline. For example, states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act receive an enhanced federal match (90%) for newly eligible adults.
- The One Big Beautiful Bill Act limits how states can fund and structure their Medicaid programs. This includes:
- ending the temporary 5-percentage-point FMAP bonus for states that expanded Medicaid after 2021;
- reducing or eliminating federal reimbursement for certain services, including emergency care for undocumented immigrants;
- and requiring states to implement work requirements and cost-sharing for some adult recipients.
- ending the temporary 5-percentage-point FMAP bonus for states that expanded Medicaid after 2021;
- In July, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it was deferring more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota while it investigates allegations of fraud.
- Learn more about Medicaid in this video with Steve Ballmer.
Data behind the news
Tens of thousands of people are without power after Tropical Storm LaLa wrought extensive damage across Hawaii. Here’s the latest data on 2026 tropical storms and hurricanes.
The nation’s unemployment rate was 4.1% last month, down 0.1 percentage point from June. See unemployment data for the nation and your state here.
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One last fact
The middle class had $13.6 trillion in household wealth in the first quarter of 2026, 8% of the nation’s total. That’s an average of $503,300 per middle-class household.
Over half of middle-class wealth was in real estate (35.9%) and retirement accounts (19.8%).
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