Something Changed in Texas
The Smokehouse Wildfire Sparked Recognition of Risk and Legislative Action
For years, wildfire had been a creeping threat in Texas. Smoldering at the edge of policy priorities, with firefighting largely confined to local volunteer departments and scattered mitigation efforts.
Then came the Smokehouse Creek Fire. Almost 500,000 acres burned in one day in this fast-moving fire. A total of over 1 million acres were scorched in two weeks, causing deaths, dislocation and Billions (yes, “B”) in property damage across the Panhandle. It became the largest wildfire in state history and has served as a wake-up call for lawmakers.
Athena published this map of Texas two months before the Smokehouse Fire. The red shows the areas where the condition of the land (its “profile”) is the same as the majority of wildfires in Texas’ recent history.
Fortunately, in early 2025, the Texas Legislature passed a sweeping set of wildfire preparedness and mitigation bills, with bipartisan support : Co-authors include Republicans Sen. Kevin Sparks and Rep. Ken King and Democrats Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and Sen. Cesar Blanco. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has praised SB 34 for building “more tools to prevent wildfires like the Panhandle Wildfire.”
This comprehensive wildfire-preparedness legislation was sent to the Governor on June 1, 2025. (As of today, 2 weeks later, Governor Abbott had not signed the bill. Without his signature, the bill goes into effect on September 1, 2025.)
Texas is finally acting like a state that understands fire is part of its future. SB 34 focuses on four essential components:
Funding for Volunteer Fire Departments — many of which are the first and only line of defense in rural counties. They will receive increased funding, with at least 10% of state funding is specifically for high-risk areas.
Rachelle Wilson, author of Build Your Own Brigade says, “Volunteer fire departments face many funding challenges that result in a response delays and operational challenges. These include lack of wildfire-specific training, lack of suppression equipment and personal protective equipment. Additionally, many volunteer firehouses were not designed to house crews brought in to help with wildfires.” SB34 will help rural, volunteer fire teams better prepare for wildfire.
Equipment Inventory — A new, statewide equipment inventory will be created to help all fire departments, from small towns to large regional agencies, access real-time information on available firefighting resources.
Regulatory Oversight of Utility Lines — The Railroad Commission, under SB34, must now notify the Public Utility Commission when it finds unsafe lines at oilfield sites. Inspectors will be dispatched, and electric service can be shut off in high-risk periods, similar to an electric utility’s Public Safety Power Shutoff program. Investigators determined that deteriorated utility lines at oilfield sites were a major wildfire ignition source.
Since 2006, power lines have sparked nearly 60% of major fires in the Panhandle.
New Risk Assessment Studies — Texas A&M Forest Service and West Texas A&M University will conduct a statewide wildfire risk study, defining hazard zones based on “fuel loads” (material like dry grasses and brush), similar to the USDA’s Forest Service maps.
Athena Intelligence, a data vendor, applauds this effort. However, for communities and public-owned utilities (Coops, municipal managed and community aggregators) that need risk assessment now, Athena has cost effective wildfire risk maps available today, for anywhere in Texas. (Sample maps: Guadalupe Valley Elec Coop, Weatherford Municipal Utility System, Bailey County Electric Coop, Austin Energy Service).
We encourage you to look at these maps, which are scalable and interactive, as you click in various WUI blocks (areas that often align with census blocks), you will see the underlying data in a box to the right.
Firefighters and Disaster planners appreciate Athena’s data is traceable to the original sources with data like “Conditional Flame Length” and is updated quarterly for the upcoming 12 months.
Using the Smokehouse Fire as an example:
Admittedly, the data from the US government sources is free and the Texas researchers will be adding local nuance when their maps are available, but the map above was prepared for an engineering company working with a public utility in Texas two months before the Smokehouse Fire.
One Key Shortfall in SB 34
Before Senate Bill 34 passed, it went underwent the normal negotiations between various stakeholders. One important proposal didn’t make it through the process. House Bill 13 included a Texas Interoperability Council, a centralized emergency communication framework for all first responders. It passed the House, but stalled in the Senate, despite strong backing from emergency leaders, including Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd.
Looking to the Future
Texas has learned the hard way that fighting 21st-century wildfires with 20th-century tools is like getting to meetings on time when your clock is a sundial.
High-resolution wildfire data can help organizations with risk move faster. A mid-sized southwestern utility (investor-owned) was shown the areas to focus on that would reduce 60% of their wildfire risk liability. This helped them prioritize equipment hardening and plan vegetation management more efficiently.
In addition to hyperlocal wildfire risk assessments for community emergency planners and utility engineers, Athena Intelligence’s Voice of the Acre® offers utilities tools like Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), Financial Impact & Risk reporting for project prioritization, and the type of Risk Reduction to Wildfire Investment sought by regulators and bond investors.
If your organization is planning for wildfire today, you need data that’s already anticipating tomorrow. For information about the 2026 wildfire risk, reach out to us today.
Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.
Our primary clients are electric utilities, especially municipal utilities, community owned cooperative electrical companies and community aggregators. Athena’s data is currently used in wildfire mitigation plans (WMP) and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), Risk Spend Efficiency reporting to PUCs and other stakeholders.
You can reach out to me at Elizabeth@AthenaIntel.io and follow us on LinkedIn or Energy Central
If you’re a local official, utility manager, or CWPP consultant, we’d love to connect and show you how Voice of the Acre® can support your community’s resilience journey.
