Wildfire Suppression Contracting: The Effect of Local Business Capacity During Large Wildfires

Contracting capacity and local capture can be the result of local economic conditions (supply side conditions) as well as agency contracting practices (demand side conditions). In order to capture contracts locally, local businesses that can perform the work need to exist, and past experience contracting with the federal government is a reasonable indicator of that capacity. To better understand local contracting capacity, we examined how local contract capture varied between wildfires and the relationship between local capture and contracting capacity measures. We investigated how the number of vendors prior to a wildfire affected local capture of suppression contracts when a large wildfire occurred, and whether counties with specific economic specializations were more or less likely to capture wildfire suppression funds when a fire occurred locally.