By Kathryn Stelmach Artuso
After the wind-driven Mountain fire swept through Ventura County on November 6, 2024, destroying 243 structures including homes, local residents and officials are glad to offer advice and assistance to those who lost their homes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
But they would also appreciate the same assistance Gov. Gavin Newsom offered to the wildfire victims in Los Angeles County, including help with debris removal and waivers for environmental inspections on their properties.
Newsom’s executive order on January 12 suspended reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and waived California Coastal Act permitting for L.A. County fire victims, allowing them to rebuild their homes and businesses more quickly. CEQA reviews can take several months and are designed to investigate and resolve potentially harmful consequences to the environment.
Newsom also extended protections against price gouging on construction materials, and directed state agencies to identify additional permitting requirements that could be waived or expedited, including portions of the Building Code.
Ventura County was not included in this executive order.
“I feel like we are the forgotten fire because we’re not L.A.,” said Camarillo resident Alia Phillips, who lost her home in the Mountain fire.
Kelly Long, a member of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, echoed that view. “I get so frustrated because we lost almost 300 structures and yet people forgot, because in less than 60 days we had the Palisades fire — and that just took over everything,” Long said.
California state Assemblymember Steve Bennett, 38th District, recently asked the governor to offer the same exemptions to those who lost their homes in Ventura County, including waivers for environmental inspections as well as protection against exploitative pricing on construction materials..
“The people in the Mountain fire area are in the same economic market,” Bennett said. “They’re going to be competing for the same materials, the same labor, the same contractors. They’re going to have the same challenges, so hopefully the governor will extend those exemptions to them.”
Bennett has also been at the forefront of addressing issues with hydrants, pumps, and backup generators. After the Thomas fire in 2017, when hydrants in one Ventura neighborhood ran dry within 20 minutes, Bennett — who was then a member of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors — sought to investigate the problems, but ended up filing a lawsuit against the city of Ventura to have the details made public.
The documents were released to him in 2020.
During the Mountain fire, one water company’s pump station burned, and another water company had to borrow a portable backup generator from CalWARN (California’s Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network), according to Ian Prichard, deputy general manager of Calleguas Municipal Water District.
Long noted that the complete after-action report about the Mountain fire will be released in about six months with more specific details.
To address these issues, Bennett says he plans to introduce bills in the state legislature that would require improvements to California’s water infrastructure.
“When we get the red flag warning, [water companies] need to top the tanks off, they need to have backup power, and they also need to make sure that they fireproof, or make fire-resistant, their pumps and theirbackup generators,” Bennett said.
“It won’t guarantee that you won’t run out of water,” Bennett said. “It just means you won’t run out of water as fast.”
He noted that Camarillo’s Crestview Water Company will likely need to buy a few backup generators, costing about $250,000 each. “If you amortize that over 20 years, that will probably be about four dollars a month increase in water bills,” he said. “Everybody I’ve talked to so far says they’d be happy to pay four or five dollars a month more to make sure the hydrants are going to operate longer when the wildfire comes.”
Despite a 2023 Ventura County grand jury report that faulted several public water purveyors for not having adequate backup power in the event of disruptions due to fire damage or the loss of utility power, Prichard noted that water companies make risk-benefit assessments according to their budgets.
He also explained the challenges surrounding any attempts to boost water storage while maintaining enough chlorine to disinfect the water.
“Say we want to have 10 times as much (water) storage,” Prichard said. “Say we want 10 million gallons on the hill. As a water manager, as an operator of a distribution system, I would have a very difficult time maintaining a disinfection residual [with enough chlorine] because there’s so much more water.”
Beyond those issues, Andrew Dowd, public information officer for the Ventura County Fire Department, painted a picture of the ordeals facing firefighters.
“If an entire house is engulfed in fire, I need a flow rate of water of approximately 1,000 gallons per minute to put that fire out,” Dowd said. “With 100 homes on fire, or 200 homes on fire — now we’re talking about 500,000 to one million gallons per minute. I don’t know that any municipal water system is designed to pump 500,000 to one million gallons per minute.”
Ventura County Supervisor Long said that they had enough water to douse the Mountain fire, but not enough coordinated infrastructure.
She said the Board of Supervisors hopes to rectify the problems by working closely with Southern California Edison (SCE) to ensure that only certain power circuits are turned off during wildfires.
“We are talking with everybody about ensuring that there is a backup generator, that there are two sources of power for our water districts, and then also working with SCE, ensuring that water districts are not turned off — along with our hospitals and other critical infrastructure, along with traffic lights,” Long said.