More than 65,000 wildfires. Over 9 million acres burned. That’s the wildfire toll in the United States so far this year alone, and it’s touching communities that never used to think twice about fire risk.

Wildfires used to seem like a regional problem, something for California or Colorado to worry about. Not anymore. Fires are breaking out in more places across the country, fire seasons are stretching longer, and blazes are burning hotter. Millions of households now face real risks, from evacuation and property damage to the everyday disruption of smoke-filled air.

The good news? Preparation works. The American Red Cross recommends a few concrete steps: sign up for local emergency alerts, build a “Go Bag,” create an evacuation plan, and clear hazards around the home, removing flammable vegetation and creating a defensible buffer zone. None of this is complicated, but it makes a real difference when a wildfire hits.

That’s the idea behind the Red Cross’s Wildfire Preparedness Program, launched in 2023. Volunteers and community partners go door-to-door in high-risk areas, evaluate each property, and leave residents with a clear plan.

But does it change what people do? I’ve been part of a team at NORC evaluating exactly that question.

Earlier this year, we surveyed the 778 households across eight states, including California, Hawaii, and Washington, that received a Red Cross visit from September 2024 to September 2025. We also surveyed a comparison group of 1,129 residents in similarly high-risk wildfire areas who hadn’t received one. Using a comparison group—rather than just asking participants if they felt the visit was helpful—let us see whether the Red Cross’s program was changing behavior.

A lot of preparedness programs seem like they’re working because residents are engaged and say they learned something. But feeling informed and being prepared are two different things. Rigorous evaluation is how you tell them apart.

The gap between the two groups was striking. Households that received a Red Cross visit:

• Were twice as likely to have a “Go Bag” ready (68 percent vs. 32 percent for the comparison group)
• Were far more likely to have an evacuation route planned (88 percent vs. 58 percent for the comparison group)
• Took more mitigation actions around their homes—87 percent took three or more steps to reduce wildfire risk vs. 71 percent for the comparison group
• Felt prepared to respond to a wildfire (99 percent vs. 58 percent for the comparison group)

That’s a significant difference between a household that freezes when the evacuation order comes and one that already knows what to do. 

One of the most interesting findings is how far the impact traveled beyond the households that received a Red Cross visit. Eighty-eight percent of the program’s participants shared what they learned with someone else—family members, neighbors, and friends. A single visit seeded preparedness conversations across a whole block or family network.

And participants weren’t lukewarm about the program’s effectiveness, either. One hundred percent found the property walk-through—where volunteers gave hands-on, specific recommendations for making homes more fire-resistant—useful. That’s a rare number in survey research. When people tell you something is universally useful, it’s worth paying attention.

None of this would carry the same weight without the right evaluation design. We built our comparison group using AmeriSpeak^®, NORC’s nationally representative panel of U.S. adults, which let us survey households with similar wildfire risk profiles who hadn’t received a visit.

That gave us something a standard post-visit survey never could: a real baseline to measure against. Combined with a focus on measuring concrete actions instead of just satisfaction, this design let us see whether the program changed people’s behaviors. It’s a lesson worth borrowing for any preparedness program, in any hazard space.

Wildfires aren’t going away, and neither is the need for programs that help households prepare before disaster hits. Our evaluation shows that a relatively low-cost intervention—a home visit, some education, and resources—can meaningfully shift whether a family has a plan, a bag ready, and the confidence to use both when it counts.

• Red Cross wildfire preparedness visits significantly increased residents’ concrete preparedness behaviors, including having a “Go Bag,” creating an evacuation plan, and taking home mitigation actions.
• Preparedness knowledge spread well beyond the household visited—88 percent of participants shared what they learned with others.
• Rigorous evaluation design, including the use of a comparison group, was essential to demonstrating real behavior change rather than just participant satisfaction.

• Our evaluation suggests that structured home-visit models are highly effective at increasing preparedness behaviors, particularly in high-risk, high-vulnerability areas.
• The data show the ripple effect of shared learning, suggesting household visits function as a community-level intervention, not just an individual one.
• The findings demonstrate the value of building evaluation into program designs from the outset, using comparison groups and behavioral outcome measures to assess true impact.