Full cost of California’s wildfires to the US revealed

California's 2018 wildfires cost the US economy $148.5bn (£110bn) (0.7% of the country's annual GDP), of which $45.9bn was lost outside the state, according to researchers from universities including UCL. More than 8,500 separate fires burned during 2018 in California, making them the deadliest and most destructive of any year in the state's history.  The state itself incurred damages of $102.6bn, roughly 0.5% of the US's annual GDP. While capital losses and health costs within California totalled $59.9bn, indirect losses through economic disruption to 80 industry sectors within the state came to $42.7bn. The US economy also suffered an additional $45.9bn in indirect losses outside California, due to economic links between California and the rest of the US. For the paper China's Tsinghua University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics combined physical, epidemiological and economic models to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the blazes. Direct capital losses represented 27% of the estimated total damages in California.