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Wildfire risks in California are increasing. While climate change and decades of fuel buildup have exacerbated wildfires, ongoing home development in wildfire-prone lands is also driving wildfire risks to communities. Experts warn that the destruction seen in the past three years — including well over 100 fatalities, 40,000 structures destroyed, and nearly $40 billion in insured losses — is not an anomaly, but a look into our near future. The alarm bells are clamoring for action.
Understanding the risk to homes
Media narratives often portray wildfire as a disastrous inferno, a 100-foot wall of flames raging toward our homes. But the real culprits of home loss and community devastation are much less dramatic: embers flying well in advance of a wildfire front.
Embers are responsible for up to 90% of home destruction during a wildfire. Landing on flammable materials — such as dry shrubs, wood roofs, decks, firewood piles and even vehicles — the small ignition points quickly spread and become larger individual spot fires. In turn, as the multitude of spot fires grow, they amass and intensify. Then, together with quick-moving surface fires, they can engulf and destroy homes.
Recognizing that many homes burn down from fires ignited by embers and not an all-consuming wildfire front simplifies the challenge of creating fire-adapted communities. By directing mitigation measures to the 100-foot zone surrounding a home — known commonly as the home ignition zone — as well as the home itself, chances of improving survivability during a wildfire greatly increase.
Enhancing the defensible space and wildfire resistance of individual homes not only reduces the risk of that home’s ignition, but also home-to-home ignitions, and equips the larger neighborhood to better withstand wildfire spread. As a result, firefighters can focus on individual home ignitions and not become overwhelmed by multiple homes burning simultaneously, which can lead to larger and more disastrous neighborhood conflagrations.
Planning for inevitable wildfires
Wildland fire is a natural and inevitable part of our Bay Area ecosystem. As extreme and large wildfires become more common, wildfire suppression will become less effective. Communities such as Portola Valley and Woodside must consider how, where, and under what conditions development in high wildfire hazard areas should occur.
Creating homes and communities better adapted to wildfires requires a judicious and proactive approach to prudent land use planning. Through sound land use, development and building regulation, we can achieve wildfire mitigation as well as the community’s larger goals for growth, sustainability, and resilience.
Community plans and policies
In California, each community’s vision for its future development is guided by its general plan and municipal ordinances regulating its future development and building. By incorporating a comprehensive assessment of wildfire hazards and risks into the general plan’s policies and municipal regulations for future development and growth, communities can provide a workable framework to protect the community’s population, values, and resources from wildfire impacts.
Wildfire risks are only increasing. Wildfires are going to happen, and we cannot suppress them all. Now is the time to plan and prepare before the next wildfire disaster occurs.
What we should do now
Individuals: Fire-harden and maintain your residence, home ignition zone (HIZ), defensible space and property’s vegetation. Every homeowner must do their part.
Neighborhoods: Maintain neighborhood open space, ravines and evacuation routes; CERT training; organize and practice neighborhood evacuation drills, emergency preparedness and mutual assistance. WPV-Ready is the emergency response volunteer program within the Woodside Fire Protection District.
Communities: Wildfires entail risks that can only be mitigated through communitywide action. Effective reduction of wildfire risks requires coordinated planning and execution, fire safety development and building standards, regular forest management, prescribed burns, outreach, Firewise communities (which meet a set of voluntary criteria from the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association), education, and communitywide preparation.
Don Bullard is battalion chief and fire marshal for the Woodside Fire Protection District.
