Wildfire Asset Exposure Screener — Live Perimeter Distance

Screen any list of asset locations against live US wildfire perimeters from NIFC WFIGS (the interagency system behind official fire maps). For every point you supply, this actor answers the question insurers, portfolio managers, and ops teams actually ask:

"Is this location inside or near an active wildfire — and how close, exactly?"

One input row in, one enriched row out: in-perimeter flag, distance in miles to the nearest active fire perimeter edge, fire name, acres, containment %, a simple exposure level (IN_PERIMETER / WITHIN_5_MI / WITHIN_25_MI / CLEAR) — plus two background risk signals looked up at the same point: USFS Wildfire Hazard Potential class and whether the point has ever burned before.

All active-fire geometry math (ray-casting point-in-polygon with holes, point-to-perimeter-edge distance) runs locally against the live perimeter polygons — no geocoding services, no API keys, no rate-limited third parties. The two background signals are live per-point lookups against USFS and NIFC ArcGIS services.

Who it's for

• Insurance & underwriting teams — screen a book of insured properties every morning; triage anything WITHIN_5_MI.
• Real-estate & asset portfolio managers — exposure roll-up across hundreds of sites in one run.
• Risk, BCP & security ops — automatic checks of offices, warehouses, cell sites, substations; alert on level changes.
• Supply-chain teams — screen supplier plants and distribution centers during fire season.
• AI agents — a clean, chainable "wildfire check" tool: coordinates in, structured verdict out.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 34.05, "lon": -118.24, "label": "Los Angeles office" },
    { "lat": 38.58, "lon": -121.49, "label": "Sacramento site" }
  ],
  "radiusMiles": 25,
  "states": [],
  "includeIncidentPoints": true,
  "includeWhp": true,
  "includeHistoricalBurn": true
}

Output fields (one row per asset = one $0.01 check)

Invalid points produce an ERROR row and the run continues — one bad coordinate never fails a 500-asset batch. The two background lookups follow the same rule: an unreachable USFS or NIFC service degrades that asset's row to null fields + a note in enrichment_note, it never fails the whole run.

Data sources

• NIFC WFIGS Current Interagency Fire Perimeters (ArcGIS FeatureServer, updated continuously through the fire day) — fetched with full polygon geometry once per run.
• WFIGS Current Incident Locations (points) — catches brand-new or small wildfires that have no mapped perimeter yet; deduplicated against perimeters by IRWIN id.
• USFS Wildfire Hazard Potential (WHP), classified raster — a 270m landscape-scale fuels-and-fire-behavior rating from the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, served via the USFS Interagency Image and Point Product (IIPP) ImageServer. This is a background wildland-fuels metric, not a structure-level risk score or a prediction that a specific building will burn — treat it as one input to a broader risk picture, alongside the live perimeter distance above.
• NIFC InterAgency Fire Perimeter History (All Years) — the historical companion to the WFIGS Current layers; mapped perimeters going back decades, contributed independently by multiple agencies (this actor takes the most recent burn year per point when a fire is mapped more than once).

Keyless, official, and free — you pay only for the per-asset checks. The two background lookups can be turned off (includeWhp: false, includeHistoricalBurn: false) if you only want the live-perimeter distance check.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is exposed via mcp.apify.com — AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) can call it as a wildfire-exposure verification tool. The input schema (lat/lon/label list) and the field-level output descriptions are designed to be read and chained by agents: geocode an address upstream, screen it here, branch on exposure_level downstream.

FAQ

Is this an official evacuation source? No. Perimeters can lag real fire spread by hours. This is an advisory screening layer — every row carries a disclaimer. For life-safety decisions use local authorities and inciweb.wildfire.gov.

How do I check if an address is near a wildfire? Geocode the address to lat/lon (any geocoder), then pass it in assets. The row tells you the nearest active fire and the distance in miles.

What does distance_miles: 0 mean? The point is inside the fire perimeter polygon (in_perimeter: true,

exposure_level: IN_PERIMETER

Why did a fire I saw in the news not appear? If it is fully contained and dropped from the Current WFIGS layers it is no longer an active fire. Very new starts may exist only as incident points (keep includeIncidentPoints: true).

Can I screen only one state? Yes — set states: ["CA"] to fetch only fires originating in California. Leave it empty when assets sit near state lines (fires cross borders; the point of origin determines the state tag).

How is the distance computed? Locally: ray-casting point-in-polygon (holes and multi-part perimeters respected) plus haversine-based point-to-segment distance to every perimeter edge, taking the minimum. No server-side geometry calls, so 500 assets screen in seconds.

What does a "Non-burnable" WHP class mean — is that an error? No. The USFS raster classifies developed land and open water as Non-burnable / Water rather than assigning a hazard tier — a town center or a lake pixel legitimately comes back that way even in a fire-prone region. Check the surrounding wildland (or the live perimeter distance above) for the actual local exposure picture.

Has this location ever burned before? historical_burn checks the point against NIFC's historical fire-perimeter archive (decades of mapped fires, independent of the current active-fire layers). true means the point falls inside a past fire perimeter; last_burn_year and last_burn_fire_name give the most recent one on record.

Is WHP a guarantee a property will or won't burn? No. It's a landscape-scale (270m) wildland-fuels and fire-behavior potential rating, not a structure-level risk score, defensible-space assessment, or insurance underwriting verdict — use it as one input alongside the live perimeter/historical-burn signals, not a standalone yes/no answer.