Scientists at a nonprofit research site in Richburg, South Carolina are burning homes to understand how to protect houses as wildfires intensify with climate change, testing both how flames attack building features and how quickly fire can leap from nearby combustibles. In one trial, wind-whipped flames raced from the side of a house to shatter a window, burn under the eaves and destroy everything inside in less than three minutes, according to the account of the tests.
The work is done by crews operating from a remote facility that includes sensors and cameras inside carefully constructed “model” houses, along with additional cameras and instruments placed outside in a fireproof building. The houses are built to be as similar to regular homes as possible without electricity or plumbing, and the institute uses those controlled conditions to isolate what differences in materials and surroundings do to ignition and fire spread.
The institute is the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, described as a nonprofit created by insurers to make buildings more resilient. It runs a 100-acre (40-hectare) campus in Richburg that began studying hurricanes and other heavy wind and rain, and as wildfire danger increased in recent years, it has also conducted tests using a wind tunnel system—stacking 105 fans on top of each other to push fire under simulated wind.
In those experiments, the institute sometimes blows fire toward houses by using the wind tunnel’s massive doors and fan array, and researchers burn houses repeatedly “in the name of science,” including setting fires to 13 houses during a current round of work. Roy Wright, the institute’s president, said: “We crash test houses,” as part of describing the approach of controlled, repeatable tests.
The institute’s findings have already fed into changes in state fire rules, including strengthening requirements for new homes such as ignition-resistant walls, tempered or double-paned windows, and mesh over vents to prevent embers from getting inside. Researchers also emphasize that protecting the outside of a home can matter as much as construction materials, including keeping a 5-foot (1.5-meter) buffer so that easy-to-burn items such as pine straw, hot tubs, wooden fences and overhanging branches do not provide nearby fuel.
In the buffer-area tests, researchers set fire to wooden blocks designed to resemble stacked pieces within the clearance zone, then used simulated winds that fluctuated between 30 and 55 mph (50 to 90 kph) to repeatedly drive flames toward the house. The described results focus on what happens after windows and walls are breached: combustible items inside—couches, furniture, clothes and plastics—quickly flare and begin sending embers that are lofted by wind, igniting new fires nearby.
Even so, fire standards have limits when conditions become extreme. Syracuse University fire researcher Jacob Bendix said: “Under really severe fire conditions, especially those involving very high winds, they probably are of more limited value,” describing how factors like very high winds can reduce the protective effect of code-based changes.
While the institute’s work aims to translate test results into real-world standards, fire prevention tools are also becoming commercial products. After experiencing the 2018 Woolsey fire near his home in Ventura County, California, Nicholai Allen became a wildland firefighter and later created Safe Soss products, which the account says include carbon filters or guards for attics and vents, fiberglass heat-resistant ember-stopping tape, and a spray fire retardant that can work from a garden hose.
Allen compared preparing for wildfire season to preparing for winter, saying: “It’s kind of like if you live in the snow, you have a snow shovel, you have scrapers, and you know that you have to take certain preventative steps in order to live in an environment that, hey, sometimes snows.” He described that framing as an analogy for the need to take preventative steps before fires arrive.
The testing itself is described as carefully controlled and often dependent on seasonal weather. The institute prefers spring tests because summer conditions in the South can be similar to hot fire-prone Western areas, while swampy humidity in midsummer does not match mountain canyons; in one recent test, high winds delayed the fires for more than six hours as workers waited, in part because an outdoor burning ban was set to begin after an unusually dry and hot spring.
Beyond the institute’s campus, the broader context is that wildfires are worsening, according to statistics kept by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the nonprofit Climate Central. From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States burned an average area described as the size of Massachusetts each year—slightly more than 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers)—which the account says is 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, citing the National Interagency Fire Center.
In Canada, the account cites that land burned over the last 10 years averaged 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. It also says wildfires have caused an average of $17.7 billion a year in damage since 2020, based on NOAA statistics and Climate Central’s figures, and notes drought across much of the U.S.—especially in the West and Southeast—has been at record severe levels for this time of year.
Park Williams, the UCLA climate and fire scientist, said record heat and unusually low moisture levels for the first three months of 2026 make the coming fire season appear “extraordinarily bad,” unless late spring or early summer rain bails out the country. The tests in Richburg, conducted under controlled conditions, are intended to help narrow the practical answer to what that means for homes—what can be changed in construction, and what can be maintained around a property—to buy time against flames driven by wind.