In the first 10 months of 2025, almost 110,000 acres across Missouri were burned by more than 2,700 wildfires.
More than 9,300 of those acres were burned by wildfires caused by power lines.
In May 2025, the Missouri Public Service Commission — which regulates the state’s utility companies — asked utilities to detail their wildfire mitigation plans.
The commission hopes to develop best practices for utilities to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect the communities they serve.
The request reflects Missouri’s changing environment, with drought and other factors driving an increase in wildfire risk statewide. Utilities’ responses highlight a patchwork approach, with some providers well into implementing plans and others still drafting them.
No stranger to fire
In the United States, wildfire is often considered a mostly western phenomenon. But Missouri is no stranger to fire — historically, nearly all of the state burned on a regular basis, according to LandFire, a federal fire management data program.
Before Europeans arrived, some parts of the state burned as often as every two years, and almost all parts of the state burned at least every 20 years, according to federal data.
That means the plants and animals in Missouri’s ecosystems evolved around wildfire, with some becoming dependent on it for renewal and survival, according to Andrew Dressel, vice president of energy practice at Charles River Associates, a consulting firm that works with utilities on risk mitigation.
Today, wildfires primarily burn in the state’s southern forests, while its northern grasslands burn far less than they did historically.
Firefighting and suppression have kept much of Missouri from burning as often as it once did. The FEMA National Risk Index characterizes most of Missouri as being at “relatively low” or “very low” risk of wildfire, a point that Ameren and Evergy — the state’s largest utilities — noted in their responses to the Public Service Commission.
But Missouri State Climatologist Zach Leasor said changing climate conditions are providing more fuel for fire.
“All of the trends we’re seeing with drought point to an increased wildfire risk here in Missouri,” Leasor said. “We might not see longer droughts … but we’re going to see short, intense droughts that are then punctuated by these extreme precipitation events.”
Leasor said these conditions exacerbate fire risk because they dry out new growth, creating more fuel.
“Usually, what we see as the best mix for a fire year would be healthy vegetation early so you build up a lot of biological mass, and then it dries down, and now you’ve got all these fuels here,” Leasor said. “That’s the worst-case scenario when you think about fire risk, especially in a state like Missouri.”
Other climate conditions, like temperature, can also play a role, he said, because warmer overnight lows have extended the growing season, pushing back winter conditions that suppress fires. That is particularly problematic because fall is Missouri’s peak fire season, when lower humidity and higher winds increase fire risk.
While Missouri hasn’t yet seen the massive blazes affecting nearby states, the potential is there, according to Michael Stambaugh, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the chair of the Oak Woodlands & Forests Fire Consortium.
“There have been half-a-million-acre fires recently in Kansas and Oklahoma. … We haven’t seen the big fires yet, but I think it’s just a matter of time,” Stambaugh said.
“The conditions are more or less the same (in Missouri) as you see in Kansas and Oklahoma,” he added. “We have the same fuels, we have the same kinds of landscapes, more or less very similar weather patterns. A lot of those ignitions are accidental, so I think it’s just a matter of time.”
Stambaugh said there is precedent for these kinds of fires in Missouri, with fires several hundred years ago burning up to 1 million acres.
“Even though we’re not seeing a significant increase in the number of fires and area burned, it doesn’t mean the potential hasn’t changed, or isn’t there, for large events to happen,” he said, adding that even if conditions make fire risk worse, the scope of that risk can be hard to fully understand until fires actually start.
The fact that Missouri hasn’t yet seen a significant increase in wildfires makes the PSC’s inquiry all the more “proactive,” according to Andrew Dressel, a consultant who works with utilities on risk mitigation.
“Missouri is not immune from wildfire risk, so it’s good to be out ahead of this,” he said, adding that states across the country have seen an increase in the risk of wildfires, including utility-related fires.
A national challenge
“This became a big issue really in the 2010s, when it stopped being a southern California problem — then it was all of California. There were a number of fires … culminating in the 2018 Camp fire,” Dressel said. “That fire started from a transmission line … that broke in a remote section of northeastern California and, hours later, burned down much of the town of Paradise and subsequently led to the bankruptcy of PG&E.”
Similar disasters followed, including Oregon’s Labor Day fires in 2020, the 2021-2022 Marshall fire in Colorado and the Lahaina fire in Maui in 2023.
Dressel said the Marshall and Lahaina fires catalyzed conversations about the role of utilities in preventing wildfires, as “that’s when people really started focusing in on why the power was even still on in those situations.”
The 2018 Camp fire and others have shown the potential for utility-related wildfires to destroy entire towns and claim lives. They’ve also demonstrated that when utility infrastructure causes or exacerbates a wildfire, the cost can be high enough to destabilize — if not bankrupt — a company, Dressel said.
That means higher costs for customers, but also higher costs for the insurance companies that work with utilities. The increase in utility-related wildfires has “skyrocketed” insurance costs for utility companies, Dressel said, which puts pressure on companies to develop wildfire mitigation plans.
Utilities’ plans
In its response to the commission, Ameren said it has wildfire liability insurance. While a wildfire mitigation plan was not required to access coverage, it said “it is helpful in securing coverage and explaining to underwriters what mitigations are being taken.”
Evergy also reported that its excess liability policy — which includes wildfire coverage — did not require it to have a plan in place.
The Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, which represents co-op utilities across the state, told the commission that “a well-structured plan helps reduce liability exposure” but did not elaborate further.
Wildfire mitigation plans outline strategies for reducing the risk of wildfire. They include plans for preventing equipment from starting fires and plans for protecting customers and equipment if a wildfire is already burning through an area, Dressel said.
Most electric utilities told the commission they “have some semblance of a plan,” but a few had no plan, Dressel said, adding that he had not reviewed any utilities’ full plans, only their responses to the PSC.
Ameren told the commission it had a plan in place but later described it as being “in its early development stage.” Evergy is developing its wildfire mitigation plans, but told the commission it expects to have a draft complete by the end of 2025.
Meanwhile, electric cooperatives across the state are in different stages of developing and implementing their plans, according to the cooperative association’s responses.
In addition to asking whether utilities had plans in place, the commission requested information about aspects of those plans, including infrastructure maintenance, risk assessment, forecasting and emergency communication.
Ameren, Evergy and the cooperatives all reported regularly inspecting and managing equipment and nearby vegetation. Asked about efforts to upgrade infrastructure, Ameren and Evergy told the commission they were working on replacing old conductors and installing new, more fire-resistant poles.
Dressel said “system hardening” — upgrades to infrastructure to improve resilience — is often considered after other mitigation strategies “because you want to see what you can do at a lower cost first.”
Other, cheaper approaches could be prioritized, like changing how the grid itself responds to potential problems. But Dressel said that section “was a little light on a lot of the responses.”
Power lines have sensors that detect when a tree branch has fallen on a line, prompting the system to shut off power to that line temporarily. Evergy spokesperson Courtney Lewis told The Beacon in an email that Evergy makes those sensors more sensitive during Red Flag Warning days “so the grid is faster to react to potential problems.”
But Dressel said that approach has its limitations if the power starts flowing again moments later. If there’s a branch sitting on the line when that happens, “then you have a fire,” Dressel said.
To prevent this, during high fire conditions, utilities could disable the technology that automatically reopens the line. But that further impacts reliability, as power would be shut off until a crew could come in person to turn it back on, Dressel said.
In its request, the commission also asked utilities about their ability to model different weather scenarios to help with planning and disaster preparedness.
Ameren told the commission it relies on the National Weather Service’s fire risk alerts but doesn’t model weather conditions. Evergy reported it currently “accesses state resources for this type of work.” Both said they are reviewing available products.
While utilities’ answers covered much of what would be needed for effective mitigation plans, Dressel said “there were several that don’t have great elements regarding coordination with public safety agencies and other utilities. They don’t necessarily have a plan to reach out to other critical infrastructure operators.”
Ameren told the commission it has not integrated its mitigation plan into state or local emergency plans, but it has instructed employees to call 911 in the event of a wildfire. Evergy, meanwhile, reported that although the focus hasn’t been on wildfires, it has built “strong working relationships” with state and local officials and first responders regarding emergency planning and communications.
Both Ameren and Evergy told the commission they participate in mutual assistance plans and work with other utilities to share best practices and provide support in the event of an emergency. However, Ameren added that it does not have “a specific procedure for information sharing” beyond planned work outage notifications.
The commission also asked utilities about their plans for public safety power shutoffs, or PSPS, which involves preemptively cutting off power during an emergency to prevent energized power lines from exacerbating a fire.
Neither Evergy nor Ameren currently has a PSPS policy in place, but both told the commission they are exploring developing one. In its report, Ameren described such a policy as a “mitigation measure of last resort.”
“Most seem to not want to do this. That’s common,” Dressel said. “But our view is that everyone should have PSPS in their plan somewhere. When conditions devolve to some really raging windstorm in very dry conditions, no one wants to shut the power off — because the primary objective of power companies is to deliver power — but sometimes, it’s the best decision you can make.”
Having a PSPS plan in place is necessary to ensure that, in the event of an emergency, utilities understand how cutting power will impact the community, he said.
“Is there critical infrastructure on that line? Is it going to affect your ability to pump water? Are you going to cut off the emergency response dispatch center? Are there medical needs customers there? Have you communicated with them?” Dressel said. “There has to be a really detailed communication strategy that involves all the stakeholders.”
Asked whether there were constraints on its ability to develop and implement mitigation plans, Evergy said it is considering potential constraints, including “stakeholder recognition of this as a risk.”
Asked by The Beacon what stakeholder feedback has looked like thus far, Lewis wrote in an email: “We have found broad support among policymakers in Missouri and Kansas for assessing wildfire risk and creating a mitigation plan through a collaborative effort.”
What’s next?
With regulators in Missouri and across the country taking notice of growing wildfire risk, regulations could very well be coming, Dressel said.
Missouri “had done some homework before asking about wildfire mitigation plans,” he said. “It looks like they did look at what other states are doing that have dealt with this more. … It seems like they weren’t just doing this on a whim.”
“With what we’ve seen elsewhere, I would not be surprised if they move forward with a requirement that Missouri utilities have a wildfire mitigation plan,” he added. “Because most of (the utilities) have something in flight, it shouldn’t be a major lift.”
Dressel said the PSC’s detailed request — covering aspects of wildfire mitigation and preparedness — could suggest that, beyond requiring a mitigation plan, the commission could require utilities to have plans for individual pieces, such as emergency communications or PSPS.
Even if the commission opts to recommend best practices rather than require them, progress has been made, Dressel said.
“Whether the PSC moves forward or not, I think just asking these questions has probably spurred most of the utilities to action,” he said.
