The Pocket Fire burning near Sedona that's had surrounding communities on alert this week has reached 27,000 acres. More than 1,200 personnel are fighting the fire, which is 51% contained.
And that's just one blaze burning around the state on top of several other large fires burning across the Southwest that are sparking evacuations, destruction — and resulted in the deaths of three firefighters.
But as people are evacuated from wildfires this summer, rushing to protect their family and homes, others are heading to betting sites like Polymarket to put money down on the fires — how big they'll grow, how long they could last, how much might be destroyed.
Kylie Mohr reports the practice has wildfire survivors calling it "morally reprehensible" and experts worrying about arson.
Mohr wrote about it for High Country News and joined The Show to tell us more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Kylie.
KYLIE MOHR: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
LAUREN GILGER: Thank you for coming on. So, tell us first just like what exactly are people betting on here? What do the questions look like?
KYLIE MOHR: Right, so the questions, as you said, it could be anything from a fire reaching a certain number of acreage by a certain day. It could be a fire being extinguished by a certain day. The way that prediction markets work is that there are these contracts that people can buy and sell based on the outcome of future events, and they're usually framed as a specific question. So, you can get as granular as you want to with anything from fire behavior, fire growth, fire spread, things like that.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And they do tend to get pretty granular. This is part, of course, of the whole kind of world of prediction markets that's so exploding right now. You can literally bet on anything, right?
KYLIE MOHR: Yes, you can bet on which team will win the World Cup, who will attend Taylor Swift's wedding — the sky is the limit.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. And we should say these these market hosts make money, basically, on each bet, right? And they're making probably a lot of money right now.
KYLIE MOHR: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: Who creates the questions that folks are betting on here?
KYLIE MOHR: Yeah, so I can say at least for Polymarket, which is one of the two largest prediction markets, the Polymarket markets team — so employees of the company — are the ones creating questions, and they are seeing what is trending on social media, where there's a lot of interest, where there's a lot of eyeballs, and then creating those bets accordingly.
LAUREN GILGER: So, you kind of analyzed this in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Southern California, where more than 16,000 structures were burned, 31 people died. People were betting on all of that?
KYLIE MOHR: Yes, they were. Yeah. So people spent about $1.2 million betting on both the Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire, which burned in January 2025 in the greater Los Angeles area.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. And so, there's obviously kind of an ethical question here. And you spoke with some survivors of those wildfires about this. What did they have to say?
KYLIE MOHR: Yeah, so they were flabbergasted, was one of the words that they used. For both of them that made it into the story, it was the first time that they had even heard that this happened. They thought it was crass, heartless, morally reprehensible to gamble on their fate, the fate of their communities, the fate of other people.
I think anytime these big fires not just burn a lot of structures but cause fatalities, that really ups the ante on these bets, and in general kind of increases the repulsion that I think people hear and feel when they learn about this happening.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And as you outline there, a lot of money involved. But there was another big concern here that came up in your reporting on this, and that's arson.
KYLIE MOHR: Right. So, you know, if you go onto these prediction markets, you can find bets on other natural disasters, too— hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, etc. But wildfires are different because we have the ability to set them. We have the ability to control them in some ways.
And so, ethicists and just the general public are worried that if you want to win a bet, maybe you'd start a fire in order to do so. Obviously, there's no examples that we know of of that happening yet. But as wildfires continue burning communities every summer and as prediction markets become more widespread, there is definitely a concern that this is going to create a perverse incentive for people.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. You spoke with one expert that said something that really struck me, said something along the lines of even just betting on something like this really diminishes the value of human life.
KYLIE MOHR: Right, I thought that that was a really well-spoken way to describe it. We're talking about people's lives, people's well-being — not even just the people who live and work in these communities, but also the firefighters who are risking their lives to try to control these fires and to keep us safe.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And there's also a new platform specifically for betting on wildfires in California. But they're framing this, your you're reporting, as a public good.
KYLIE MOHR: Right, so this was really fascinating. I found this platform kind of early on in my reporting. It's called Wyldfyre, but spelling with two Ys instead of two Is. And it purports to be the first California wildfire-specific prediction market. It encourages people to trade on what fire does next.
It's worth noting that it's currently using play money, so real money is not being exchanged yet, although they say that it's coming soon. And you can bet on fire behavior in any county or any city in the state on this platform. And you mentioned they're framing it as a public good.
And that's one of the interesting pieces about prediction markets is they position themselves as harnessing the wisdom of crowds to come up with some sort of prediction or analysis that maybe experts might miss, is their reasoning.
LAUREN GILGER: Does the Forest Service use information like that?
KYLIE MOHR: No, absolutely not. Cal Fire and the Forest Service both told me they don't use prediction market data, they don't plan to. They have their own complex, data-driven models to predict fire behavior, and they don't want to be associated with a system that ties financial gain to wildfire outcomes.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, last 30 seconds for you, Kylie. There are efforts also to rein in prediction markets, right? And sometimes from specifically betting on things like this.
KYLIE MOHR: Right, so there are There's a kind of a growing tide at a state level to rein in prediction markets. Arizona has actually been leading the charge on that with the platform Kalshi. But so far, those attempts are really focused on topics like terrorism, assassination and war. And so far, wildfire has not made that list.
LAUREN GILGER: All right. More to watch. Kylie Mohr wrote about this for High Country News. Kylie, thank you for your reporting, thanks for coming on the Show.
KYLIE MOHR: Thank you, so much.
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