Tuesday, September 15, 2026 · Where money enters, moves through, and leaves the wildfire economy

By Jake Kostecki · ~5 min read

→ Do this first: put your own hourly cost into the FAA docket before Nov 13 — the ANPRM published Sep 14 would let restricted category aircraft carry firefighters to and from the line, and the FAA is explicitly asking operators for aircraft make and model, hourly operating cost, maintenance expense, five years of flight segments and the estimated cost of meeting part 135. Whatever numbers go into docket FAA-2026-10991 become the cost basis of the rule. If you fly restricted category and stay quiet, somebody else’s spreadsheet prices your fleet.

Three capital events inside thirty hours, none of them a fire. Bamboo Insurance set IPO terms on Sep 14 at $18–$20 across 35 million shares — up to $700M of gross proceeds at a $3.24B fully diluted valuation, for a managing general agent that places roughly 4% of California’s homeowners policies, about one household in twenty-five. Read the filing before calling it a wildfire bet. Bamboo tells investors that approximately 98% of its policies were categorized as carrying moderate or lower wildfire risk at Dec 31, 2025, and names concentration in California and Texas as a risk factor. The pitch is not exposure to fire country. It is the ability to write California and leave fire country out. Every share is a selling shareholder’s, so the company takes nothing, and CVC bought control from White Mountains last year at $1.75B, which means public investors are being asked for nearly double the private price a year on.

Then the plumbing. Artemis reported this morning that Bamboo’s Greenshoots Re sidecar has now pulled $400M of third-party money, from a $70M start in April 2025 and roughly $175M in July, fronting four carriers and sitting alongside a $100M Greengrove Re cat bond. And CalPERS lifted its cat bond and ILS book to almost $2.46B at June 30 from $1.451B at year end — up about 70% in six months, on a 17.1% one-year return from its Tangency quota share. Set that against the ground: the Sep 14 national situation report puts six fires past $100M each for $777.1M combined, with California’s Timber fire at $151M and still only 39% contained, against a federal suppression account reported more than 70% spent by Aug 31. Public money is running out at the same moment private money is bidding up the people who sell insurance where it burns. Follow the money.

Twenty-two live deadlines below. The full board, updated continuously:

SEP 17 CLOSES · Joint Fire Science Program FY2027 (federal) — two days. Three announcements on one date, issued under the U.S. Wildland Fire Service banner. FA-NOFO0027-002 carries a $4M pool at $300K–$500K across about 10 awards, cooperative agreements, no cost share, on two task statements: changing wildfire regimes, and smoke impacts from prescribed and wild fire. FLAMES (FA-NOFO0027-001) caps at $40K and is open only to currently enrolled master’s and doctoral students. The Regional Fire Science Exchange (FA-NOFO0027-003) covers nine regions. Nonprofits, higher ed, state, county, local and tribal governments. Submission runs through firescience.gov, not Grants.gov. Closes Sep 17, 5 p.m. MT. Source →

SEP 17 OPENS · Boulder County Strategic Fuels Mitigation Grant (CO) — the fall cycle opens Thursday. $2M a year split across two cycles, $600K maximum per application, 50% match. Fire protection districts, HOAs, local governments, nonprofits, community groups, private utilities and state agencies, all inside Boulder County; individuals are not eligible. Window Sep 17 to Oct 29. Source →

SEP 21 CLOSES · U.S. Forest Service fire support and logistics hiring — the shorter of the two federal windows, opened Sep 11. Dispatch, logistics and fire support positions. The back-office half closes first. Source →

SEP 22 CLOSES · U.S. Forest Service national wildland firefighter hiring — the mass round opened Aug 24: suppression crews, engine operators, hotshots, dispatchers. Search USAJOBS by series and duty station rather than by keyword. Source →

SEP 25 CLOSES · BLM Invasive and Noxious Plant Management, bureau-wide (federal) — L26AS00057, $2M total, awards $20K–$400K, about 40 expected. State, county, city, township and special district governments, public and private higher ed, tribes and nonprofits. Say the wildfire link plainly: this is cheatgrass and invasive annual grass control, the rangeland fire-cycle lever, not a fuels program wearing a fire label. Source →

SEP 28 CLOSES · BLM Plant Conservation and Restoration Management, bureau-wide (federal) — L26AS00050, $2.5M, awards $10K–$500K, about 50 expected, same eligibility slate. Post-fire restoration and native seed supply. Two BLM rounds three days apart, roughly 90 awards against $4.5M, is the largest cluster of federal restoration money on the calendar this month — and, given the suppression account, the most exposed to a fire-borrowing transfer. Source →

SEP 29 EXPIRES · Oregon DFR wildfire emergency order — Bulletin 2026-06 implements the Jul 31 emergency order under ORS 731.870 across 24 counties, extended 30 days by an Aug 26 order. Property and casualty insurers must suspend cancellations and nonrenewals, grant premium grace periods and extend claim-reporting deadlines in covered ZIP codes. Fourteen days — diarize the expiry, because that is when the nonrenewal queue reopens. Source →

SEP 29 BATCHING · NRCS FY2027 EQIP, CSP, ACEP and RCPP — EQIP signup is continuous, but states set their own ranking cutoffs, so there is no national date. South Dakota’s FY27 batching date of Sep 29 is confirmed; other states vary and California’s FY27 date is not published, so do not diarize one. EQIP funds fire hazard reduction vegetation management and post-fire restoration on non-industrial private forestland, with underserved producers eligible for up to 90% reimbursement and advance payments. Source →

SEP 30 CUTOFF · FM Fire Prevention Grant (the moat) — insurer-administered seed grants reviewed quarterly on Mar 31 / Jun 30 / Sep 30 / Dec 31, decisions three to four months out, no stated cap and no match. Open to any U.S. organization or agency supporting fire prevention: pre-incident planning, prevention education and training, arson prevention and fire investigation. The widest eligibility on this board and the only private program with a confirmed cutoff this month. Standing caveat: FM calls this seed money, not project financing, and publishes no award figure. Fifteen days. Source →

SEP 30 DECIDES · Newsom’s desk, ten CDI-sponsored insurance bills (CA) — not a grant, a market. The Governor has until Sep 30 to sign or veto the package sent Sep 2. The one to watch is AB 1795, the Smoke Damage Recovery Act: science-based smoke damage standards, insurer inspection within 30 days of claim notice, insurer-funded testing and sampling, additional living expense maintained until the home clears for occupancy, and survivors choosing their own contractors. AB 1680 tightens FAIR Plan oversight; SB 878 accelerates total-loss payments. If AB 1795 is signed, industrial hygiene testing and contents remediation stop being discretionary line items in California. Source →

OCT 1 CLOSES · City of Boulder Wildfire Resilience Assistance Program (CO · consumer) — a municipal home-hardening rebate paying up to $2,000 per property, funded by Boulder’s 2022 Climate Tax, first-come first-served or until funds are exhausted. Restricted to properties inside the city’s wildland-urban interface zone; requires a Detailed Home Assessment conducted on or after Nov 13, 2023. All work and documentation due Dec 1. Pool not published. Source →

OCT 8 CLOSES · Colorado FRWRM Grant (CO) — $7.04M announced Aug 3. The state funds 50–75% of project cost with the applicant matching 25–50%, cash or in-kind, scaled to the project location’s economic-resources classification. Public and private utilities are explicitly eligible, alongside community groups, fire protection districts, tribes, nonprofits and private, state, county and municipal forestland owners — and applicants must coordinate with county officials for consistency with county wildfire planning. Awards announced Mar 31, 2027. Closes Oct 8, 5 p.m. Source →

OCT 8 CLOSES · Boulder County Wildfire Partners general rebate (CO · consumer · the moat) — the most directly consumer-facing money we track: up to $500 per household or rental property out of a $1.625M 2026 rebate pool, open to owners and renters countywide including inside municipalities. Funded by the 2022 voter-approved county Wildfire Mitigation Sales Tax — no Grants.gov listing, no federal appropriation to wait on, and therefore no exposure to the suppression-account problem above. Prior recipients may reapply for a different activity. First come, first served. Applications close Oct 8, 5 p.m. MT; documentation due Oct 29. Source →

OCT 12 CLOSES · USDA Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Challenge Cost Share (federal) — USDA-FS-UCF-01-2026, posted Aug 12. $1M pool, awards $200K–$750K, 5 expected, cost share required. State, local and tribal governments, 501(c)(3)s, educational institutions and community-based partners. Read the caveat before you chase it: the notice never says wildfire, fire risk or fuels. The adjacency to fuels economics is real; the framing is not. Source →

OCT 13 CLOSES · USFS Community Forest and Open Space Conservation (federal) — USDA-FS-2026-CFP, posted Aug 12, $600K cap per award, cost share required. Fee-simple acquisition by tribes, city and township governments and 501(c)(3) conservation nonprofits, public access required. Closes Oct 13. Source →

OCT 13 DUE · Leary Firefighters Foundation 2026 full applications (the moat) — and read the stage before you plan around it. The letter-of-inquiry window ran May 1 to Aug 16 and is closed; only departments invited off an LOI can file by Oct 13. Awards typically run $2,500–$25,000, occasionally larger, to paid and volunteer U.S. fire departments, never to individuals. If you missed the LOI, the action item is a calendar entry for May 2027, not an application this month. Source →

OCT 15 EFFECTIVE · California FAIR Plan 29.1% rate increase — the CDI-approved 29.1% average increase, trimmed from a requested 35.8%, lands across more than 675,000 policyholders behind $768B of exposure at June 2026, up from $724B at December. Distribution is uneven: high-wildfire-risk premiums may roughly double while some low-risk urban policies fall. Thirty days. Source →

NOV 3 ARGUED · PacifiCorp’s $2.2B Oregon class judgment, Oregon Supreme Court — review granted Jun 30, oral argument Nov 3. $2.2B in dispute across roughly 2,000 class members from the four 2020 Labor Day fires, after the Court of Appeals reversed on procedural grounds. A separate class verdict landed at $305M on Feb 27, and PacifiCorp has already paid $575M to resolve federal claims. A binary event with a date on it. Source →

NOV 13 CLOSES · FAA comments, firefighter transport in restricted category aircraft — new yesterday. Docket FAA-2026-10991, an ANPRM published Sep 14 responding to section 360 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. It would amend 14 CFR 91.313, which today bars carrying anyone on a restricted category aircraft who is not performing a function essential to the special-purpose operation, to permit transporting firefighters for ground-based suppression. No FAA cost estimate exists; the agency is asking operators to supply hourly operating and maintenance cost by make and model, five years of flight segments, the share of desired operations previously cancelled, and the estimated cost of meeting part 135. Fifty-nine days to put your economics in the record. Source →

NOV 30 CLOSES · SCE Eaton Fire Direct Claims Program (CA · the moat) — not a grant, but the largest private compensation pool with a live deadline in the wildfire economy. Southern California Edison reported more than $820M offered and more than $410M paid as of Aug 14 across 4,250-plus claims covering 13,000-plus claimants, having moved from $743M offered and $314M paid on Jul 16 — roughly $96M of additional payments in four weeks. Participation closes Nov 30. Restoration contractors and public adjusters working Altadena: that is your paying counterparty, and it stops taking new entrants in eleven weeks. Source →

FALL — WATCH · California Fire Foundation Proposition 4 Grant (the moat) — the biggest un-opened pot on our board. $13.8M of Prop 4 bond money, awards up to $1,000,000, no match required, eligible to California fire departments, firefighter associations, nonprofits and tribal entities. The foundation’s own page still says only “application period will be announced Fall 2026.” Its Southern, Central and Coastal California Fire Prevention round closed Sep 14 at $10K–$100K. Watch the page weekly; contact [email protected]. Source →

WATCH — DEFERRED · USFS Community Wildfire Defense Grant, Round 4 — there is no Round 4 notice, and that is a decision rather than a delay: Alaska’s Division of Forestry says the call was made to hold the NOFO and program announcement until the end of the 2026 fire season. For scale on what is being withheld, Round 3 closed Mar 14, 2025 and drew 573 applications requesting $1.6B against $200M available, funding 58 projects. Historic caps: $250K for plan development, $10M for implementation, match 10% and 25% respectively and waivable. Build the application now; there will be no time when it opens. Source →

FUND MONEY · via Artemis

A Bermuda sidecar has quietly raised $400M to reinsure California homeowners — Sep 15, disclosed through Bamboo’s IPO filings: Greenshoots Re Ltd., described as the first MGA-sponsored sidecar, has attracted $400M of third-party capital to back quota share arrangements. The build is four steps in seventeen months: $70M of preference shares in April 2025 supporting Sutton National’s fronted business; an E&S program with Accredited in October 2025, size undisclosed; a multi-year deal with MS Transverse in July 2026 behind Bamboo’s new California admitted program, taking the facility to roughly $175M across four fronting carriers; and the $400M now in the filings. Alongside it sits Greengrove Re, a $100M cat bond the S-1 describes as brush-specific, bought expressly for wildfire losses. Read the counterparty chain again if you sell into California homeowners. The policy is fronted, the risk is reinsured by a collateralized vehicle, and the money behind it is ILS investors rather than a carrier balance sheet with a hundred-year brand to protect. That changes who you sell to, what evidence they want, and how fast capacity can be switched off. Note also what the brush bond tells you: a book that is 98% moderate-or-lower wildfire risk still buys dedicated wildfire cover, which is the honest admission that moderate risk is not no risk.

DEAL MONEY · via Insurance Journal

Bamboo sets IPO terms at $3.24B, and its filing says 98% of the book is not fire country — Sep 14: 35,000,000 shares at $18–$20, up to $700M gross, a $3.24B fully diluted valuation, NYSE ticker BMB, underwritten by J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, Evercore ISI and Wells Fargo Securities. It is a 100% selling-shareholder deal, so Bamboo receives nothing, and CVC bought control from White Mountains last year at $1.75B. Reuters and BNN carried $3.13B on an undiluted basis; both are real, they are different conventions, so say which you mean. The number that reframes the deal sits in the S-1: approximately 98% of Bamboo’s policies were categorized as moderate or lower wildfire risk at Dec 31, 2025. It still sponsors a brush-specific cat bond for wildfire losses and flags California and Texas concentration as a risk. Correct the story most people will tell about this IPO. The money is not buying wildfire exposure, it is buying the ability to underwrite around it, and that is a bet on risk selection rather than risk transfer. For anyone selling mitigation, inspection, risk scoring or home hardening, this is the clearest demand signal of the year: the commercial value now sits in proving a specific address belongs in the 98%. And the corollary is the residual market. Whatever the private book screens out does not stop existing, it goes to the FAIR Plan, which is taking 29.1% on Oct 15 against $768B of exposure.

FUND MONEY · via Artemis

CalPERS grew its cat bond and ILS book 70% in six months to $2.46B — Sep 14, on mid-year disclosures: almost $2.46B at June 30 against $1.451B at Dec 31, roughly 0.4% of $637B of assets. By manager: Tangency Capital (Bear Island QS) at about $1.157B, Integral ILS (Arctos Cat Island) at about $759M, Swiss Re ILS (CB Eiger Bear 2025) at about $543M. The Tangency quota share returned 17.1% over one year — CalPERS’ first disclosed ILS performance figure. Caveat stated plainly: the disclosure does not break out wildfire, so do not read this as CalPERS buying California fire risk. It is still the demand signal underneath every wildfire cat bond that priced tight this year. The largest U.S. public pension doubling an allocation on a 17% print is what lets a FAIR Plan bond come inside guidance. Sponsors: your cost of risk transfer is being set by pension allocators, not by your loss history, and that window is open now.

CONTRACTOR MONEY · via FAA / Federal Register

The FAA opens the door to flying firefighters in restricted category aircraft — Sep 14: an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, docket FAA-2026-10991, responding to section 360 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. Today 14 CFR 91.313 bars carrying anyone aboard a restricted category civil aircraft who is not performing a function essential to the special-purpose operation, which for firefighting means aerial dispensing of liquids. The change under study would add transporting firefighters for ground-based suppression as an allowable use. There are no cost figures in the notice — the FAA is asking operators to supply them: expected capacity gain, five years of flight segments by operation type, make and model, hourly operating and maintenance cost, the share of desired operations previously cancelled because of the restriction, and the estimated cost of meeting part 135. Comments close Nov 13. This is a business-model question dressed as a docket. If it proceeds, every restricted category rotor-wing fleet in the country gets a second revenue line on the same airframe, and the part 135 compliance bill is the only variable. Sixty days is long enough to run your own numbers and short enough that most operators will miss it. Whoever files sets the cost basis the rule is written against.

MONEY LEAVING · via NIFC

Six fires have now cost $777.1M and Timber is still 39% contained — Sep 14, 0730 MDT: the national Incident Management Situation Report puts Little Giant, WA at $155.8M across 172,695 acres and 81% contained; California’s Timber at $151M across 25,426 acres and 39%; Sinlahekin, WA at $128.1M across 166,026 acres and 76%; Rowe Creek Complex, OR at $124.7M across 373,927 acres and 99%; Grasshopper, OR at $113.9M across 94,003 acres and 97%; and Aspen Acres, CO at $103.6M across 102,004 acres and 82%. Behind them: Hagen, OR at $80.7M, Plaskett, CA at $55.1M, Sand Creek, MT at $33.7M and only 58% contained, McCully, OR at $33.3M. Nationally 57 uncontained large fires, 54,407 fires year to date at 123% of the ten-year average and 8,435,367 acres at 149%, preparedness level 3. Timber added $3.2M in a day and did not move a point of containment. Read cost per acre, not cost: Rowe Creek has spent $124.7M across 373,927 acres and is 99% out, Timber $151M across 25,426 acres and is 39% out. That is roughly $5,940 an acre against $334, and the gap is structure protection rather than line. California engine contractors, water tender operators, structure protection specialists and fallers with availability: demand has not peaked. Fuels contractors: that same arithmetic is the reason your account gets raided in October.

CONSUMER MONEY · via Colorado Legislative Council

Colorado’s wildfire mitigation tax credit was claimed by 457 people — and it triples in 2027 — the legislature’s June 2026 tax expenditure evaluation on tax year 2023: 457 individual taxpayers claimed the credit, for roughly $198,158 in total, an average of about $434. Present terms are 25% of eligible costs, a $625 maximum, a $120,000 federal taxable income cap, non-refundable, expiring Jan 1, 2031. The evaluators rated it partially effective and found under 50% of surveyed stakeholders knew it existed, with the $625 cap covering only 10–20% of a typical defensible space project — which they price at $3,200–$6,100. From tax year 2027 the credit becomes refundable, the cap rises to $2,000 and the income limit to $300,000 federal AGI. Home hardening — roofing, exterior walls — is still not eligible, and the evaluation recommends adding it. Two numbers to sell against. The evaluation just published an official price for defensible space work in Colorado, $3,200 to $6,100, which is a benchmark you can quote in a bid. And a 3.2x cap increase plus refundability arrives in fifteen months, which turns the credit from a rounding error into a real close-the-deal line. Mitigation contractors working the Front Range should be building 2027 pipeline on it now, and telling homeowners the quiet part: fewer than five hundred people in the state have ever claimed this.

INSURANCE MONEY · via Insurance Business

Allstate’s return to California is 2,064 policies — Sep 4, filing pending at CDI: a +1.4% overall rate change alongside a commitment to write a minimum of 2,064 new policies by July 2029, directed into CDI-designated distressed ZIP codes. About two-thirds of policyholders would see decreases; roughly 30% see increases up to 55%; fewer than 4% see 55–185%. The filing uses forward-looking catastrophe modeling and net cost of reinsurance pass-through, both unlocked by the Sustainable Insurance Strategy. Allstate paused new California business in November 2022. Two thousand and sixty-four policies over three years, from a top-five national carrier, is the actual exchange rate on the Sustainable Insurance Strategy — a toe, not a foot. Useful in both directions: if you sell risk scoring or mitigation verification, cat models in the rate filing is your demand driver. If you are betting on FAIR Plan depopulation, that is the pace it will run at.

UTILITY MONEY · via Washington State Standard

Puget Sound Energy wants 16.75% more after taking 19% — Sep 4: PSE has spent more than $200M on wildfire mitigation since 2024, took a 19% residential rate increase effective January 2026, and has proposed a further 16.75% over three years beginning January 2027. Avista spends roughly $65M a year on wildfire projects across 19,000 miles of distribution, 36% of it in high-risk areas, and carries $27M of Babb Road Fire liability. PacifiCorp has settled six Oregon and California fires for $2.2B. Three investor-owned utilities serve about 1.5 million Washington electricity customers across roughly 20,000 miles of transmission. The sharpest household wildfire cost signal outside California, and the clearest vendor opportunity in the Northwest. A utility that has already taken 19% and is asking for 16.75% more has a commission and a press corps counting every dollar — which means it needs mitigation spend it can defend on measured risk reduction. Bring outcome evidence, not feature lists.

LIABILITY MONEY · via CalMatters

Two weeks on, the $2B PG&E deferred is still the price of Sacramento doing nothing — SB 492 died without a vote on the final day of session, Sep 1. PG&E and Edison shed about $20B of combined market value across the preceding days, with EIX down 23% in its worst session in more than 25 years and PCG down about 18%. On Sep 2 PG&E formed a Strategic Review Committee and cut its 2027 capital plan from $13.4B to $11.4B — a $2B deferral, with a matching $2B reduction in planned debt. Say what is actually in the reporting: the named deferrals are new-housing and renewable interconnection, technology upgrades and certain large-load projects. Mitigation line items are not reported as cut. The bill as left standing preserves insurer subrogation and survivor claims against utilities and caps nothing. Assembly leaders pledged fall hearings. Subrogation surviving is the whole story for carriers — Mercury alone has booked a $538M anticipated Eaton recovery against Southern California Edison. For vendors, the read-through is timing rather than volume: $2B of 2027 spend is under review at one utility, and a strategic review is how a capital plan gets reopened. Get your 2027 scope confirmed in writing now, before the committee reports.

PUBLIC · via Insurance Journal

Washington puts the Spokane Complex at $600M insured — Cotality says up to $1.3B — Sep 8: the Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner estimates more than $600M of insured losses from the Spokane Complex, about $535M of it residential, across roughly 10,000 acres and about 900 structures destroyed. Cotality counts 5,256 damaged properties, 96% single-family, with combined reconstruction value of $1.9B, and puts its own insured loss range at $1.0–$1.3B. The two figures disagree and neither side has reconciled them, so cite both. Metro Spokane carries 50,000-plus properties at moderate-or-greater wildfire risk against $21B of reconstruction value. A $1.9B reconstruction pipeline in one metro is the addressable market — fire-resistant siding and roofing, restoration, defensible space, and the assessors and adjusters ahead of them. The second-order trade is regulatory: Washington just became a wildfire insurance market, and the non-renewal wave, the residual-market debate in Olympia and the first serious E&S push into eastern Washington all follow from this number.

PRIVATE GRANT MONEY · via California Fire Foundation

$13.8M of Proposition 4 money is sitting behind a private foundation with no date on it — the California Fire Foundation lists a Fall 2026 Proposition 4 Grant carrying $13.8M of state bond money, awards up to $1,000,000, no match, open to California fire departments, firefighter associations, nonprofits and tribal entities — and the page still says only that the application period will be announced. Its Southern, Central and Coastal California Fire Prevention and Preparedness round, $10K–$100K with requests generally under $75,000, closed Sep 14; decisions run four to six weeks out. This is the moat in one item: state-scale money moving through a private foundation, with no Grants.gov listing, no federal appropriation exposure and no competitor alert service watching the page. Whoever has a scoped, costed project sitting in a drawer when that window opens will be applying against a field that is still reading the guidelines. Build it in September; the announcement is the starting gun, not the briefing.

Checks written recently: The federal government → six incidents, $777.1M of suppression cost to date as of Sep 14, with Timber alone adding $3.2M in a day. Southern California Edison → Eaton claimants, more than $410M paid and more than $820M offered across 4,250-plus claims as of Aug 14, up from $314M paid on Jul 16. Hawaiian Electric → Maui claimants, the first $479M installment of a $1.916B obligation authorized Apr 10, with three more annual installments to run inside a $4.03B global settlement covering 21,750 claimants and 94,816 claims. PacifiCorp → the federal government, $575M, plus $2.2B settling six Oregon and California fires. SCE Recovery Funding LLC → capital markets, $1,953,948,000 of wildfire recovery bonds under CPUC decision D.26-05-006, priced 5.388% / 6.036% / 6.093% across three tranches to 2061. California FAIR Plan → the ILS market, $1.15B of multi-year wildfire cover across two Golden Bear Re issues, the $750M 2026-1 pricing at 9.75% and the $400M 2026-2 at 9.5% with the multiple compressing from 4.35x to 3.59x in ten weeks. Third-party investors → Greenshoots Re, $400M. CalPERS → ILS managers, $2.46B at mid-year. Crosslink, Congruent and Nuveen Real Estate → $12.5M Series A into RockRose Risk (Aug 20). The O.H.I.O. Fund and Khosla Ventures → $15M into Sonic Fire Tech (Aug 17). FM → FortressFire, terms undisclosed (Aug 13). Puget Sound Energy → its own mitigation program, more than $200M since 2024. Avista → wildfire work, $65M a year plus $27M of Babb Road liability. Texas A&M Forest Service → Bridger Aerospace, $58M over three years. CAL FIRE → M1 Support Services, $699M over five years for pilots, mechanics and aviation logistics across a fleet of 80-plus aircraft.

Awardee lists to watch (chase subcontracts): BLM’s L26AS00057 closes Sep 25 against $2M with about 40 awards at $20K–$400K, and L26AS00050 closes Sep 28 against $2.5M with about 50 at $10K–$500K — roughly 90 newly funded organizations against $4.5M in one fortnight, the best subcontract map on the board, with the standing caveat that federal restoration accounts are what fire borrowing takes first. Colorado FRWRM closes Oct 8 against $7.04M and names Mar 31, 2027 for awards, with utilities explicitly eligible — a rare case where the awardee list is published on a date you can diarize. USFS Community Forest closes Oct 13 at a $600K cap and UCF Challenge Cost Share closes Oct 12 against $1M with 5 expected. California’s Tribal Wildfire Resilience concept round closed in early September against $10M at $250K–$3M, with invitations going out in October and full applications due in December — tribal awardees almost always subcontract implementation. CAL FIRE’s Proposition 4 Wildfire Prevention round closed Jul 8 at $70M and its Wildfire Resilience Block Grants closed Aug 7 at $10M; neither list has posted. FEMA’s FY25 AFG, SAFER and FP&S rounds closed Jun 22 against $648M in total, FP&S alone at $32.4M with a $1.5M per-award cap and roughly 100 awards — a rolling announcement list worth checking weekly through October. EPA’s $13.58M smoke-preparedness selections (8–11 awards at $350K–$2.5M) closed Apr 15 and remain unpublished, and nothing has replaced that program.

Hiring signal of the week: detection stopped selling pilots and started selling accounts. Pano AI is recruiting a Strategic Accounts Sales Manager / Senior Manager in San Francisco, hybrid, up to 50% travel — and the listing is not an individual contributor role. It owns net revenue retention and expansion across enterprise accounts, carries forecasting and quarterly and annual targets, and manages a team of six account professionals. The named verticals are utilities, insurance, energy, data centers and oil and gas. No band is published. Verified active on Pano’s own job board this morning, alongside open roles for a Senior/Staff Product Manager (US remote), a Senior Product Manager for Hardware, a Senior Full Stack Engineer and a Senior AI/Computer Vision Engineer. Pano raised a $44M Series B led by Giant Ventures in June 2025. A company hires a manager of six account expanders when the problem has changed from proving the camera works to growing the contract. Two things follow. First, wildfire detection is now a land-and-expand enterprise sale, which means your competitor is being measured on NRR while you are still being measured on pilots. Second, and less obvious: data centers are named alongside utilities. The hyperscaler buildout has quietly become a wildfire buyer, and almost nobody selling into this market has a data center motion. Build one before the account teams get there. Source →

The modelling bench is hiring too: ZestyAI has a Data Scientist, Analytics and a Senior Data Scientist, Computer Vision open, both remote in Canada, and Vibrant Planet is recruiting a Software Engineer (App) and an ML Engineer, both remote in the United States. All four verified live on the employers’ own boards this morning; no bands published. Read it against Allstate’s California filing in THE WIRE. Cat models in a rate filing is a regulatory unlock that turns into headcount at the vendors who supply them, and these are the roles that get funded first. Job boards move, so re-verify before you apply. Source →

The public-sector bench keeps growing: CAL FIRE now carries 11,436 total positions, up from 5,829 in 2019 — a 96% increase, running at roughly 1,800 full-time and 600 seasonal positions added a year, with 3,600-plus emergency response leaders trained since 2019 and 39 new company officers graduating on Sep 11. The department’s fire protection budget has gone from $2B to $3.8B, with $2.5B invested in wildfire resilience and forest health and more than $350M for wildfire safety on federal lands; Cal OES has gone from $1.8B to $4.5B. On the federal side, Forest Service fire support and logistics postings close Sep 21 and the national wildland firefighter round closes Sep 22. If you sell training, PPE, apparatus, scheduling software or aviation services, you are selling into a $3.8B agency that has added roughly 5,600 positions in seven years — and thirty-nine officers got budget authority last Friday that they did not have in August. Source →

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Written by Jake Kostecki. Every dollar figure verified against a primary or credible source as of September 15, 2026.