The number of acres in the top two fire zones that must comply with stiffer, fire-safe building codes increased 76% in Southern California areas protected by local firefighters, new state hazard maps released Monday, March 24, show.”
The number in the highest tier, the “very high fire hazard severity zone,” increased by 26% in the region, meaning that more residents will have to remove flammable plants and materials around their homes and will have to have properties inspected before a sale.
The maps are part of a 40-year-old program in which the state Forestry and Fire Protection Department, or Cal Fire, periodically documents areas that are most prone to having a wildfire within the next several decades.
Using data on variables such as climate, vegetation, terrain and fire history, Cal Fire calculates whether the probability of wildfire in a given area is moderate, high or very high.
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The previous maps only designated land in very-high fire hazard zones.
Residents and local governments in the two highest fire-hazard zones have to comply with regulations covering construction, urban planning and landscaping.
The purpose of the maps, said state Fire Marshall Daniel Berlant, is to guide local governments and residents in mitigating their fire risk.
“These aren’t just colors on a map,” Berlant said in a recent interview. “They are a planning tool.”
The maps released Monday cover eight counties in Southern California and along the Nevada border: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Imperial, Inyo and Mono.
The Southern California’s five most populous counties saw the size of the very-high fire zone grow to more than 812,000 acres in the latest update, up from just over 644,000 in the previous maps, compiled between 2007-11.
The number of acres where property owners must comply with the stiffer building code — encompassing the high and very-high fire zones combined — increased to more than 1.1 million.
“In the aggregate, there’s considerably more acres. … The (fire) hazard has gotten more extreme,” said Dave Sapsis, a research manager with Cal Fire who was part of the team that developed the mapping model. “Burn probability is a foundational component of hazard, and the amount of area burning per year has gone up.”
The size of the very-high fire zones increased in 70 jurisdictions in the region’s most populous counties, and shrank in 77. The biggest increase occurred in Riverside County town of Jurupa Valley, which had 6,195 acres in the very-high zone, vs. 226 in the previous map.
Very-high fire zones increased in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, but decreased 13% in San Diego County.
Five cities that had very-high fire zones in the 2011 map — Covina, Irwindale, Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, Palm Desert and Yucca Valley — had no very-high zones in the update.
Meanwhile, 35 cities without any fire zones in the previous map now do, including Santa Monica, La Cañada-Flintridge, South Pasadena, Alhambra, Huntington Beach, Laguna Hills, Chino Hills and Rancho Cucamonga.
Local governments now have until April 23 to make the new maps public and have until July 22 to adopt them as their own designations. While cities and counties can’t reduce the size of their fire zones, they can increase them.
L.A. County Fire Chief Albert Yanagisawa said his department has yet to come up with any proposed additions to Cal Fire’s designations, although he was surprised more of Altadena wasn’t included in the new designations.
“I thought the very high fire severity zones were really going to reach deep, deep down into Altadena, and they haven’t,” Yanagisawa said Monday during a news conference.
Previous maps designated just three to six blocks along Altadena’s northern edge as being in a “very-high fire hazard severity zone.”
The new state maps show fire zones extend at least seven to eight blocks further south. However, the Eaton fire penetrated 18-28 blocks into the community, so much of the Altadena burn area still is not designated as a fire hazard zone.
The 23,000-acre Palisades fire area already had a very-high fire hazard designation.
Wildfire building code
Construction in the high and very-high fire zones must comply with Chapter 7A of the state building code, which mandates that homes have ember-resistant roofs, vents and rain gutters, have outer walls capable of withstanding heat and flames for up to an hour and have heat impenetrable windows and doors.
“It will apply as homeowners now go to rebuild,” Berlant said. “These homes will now be built to a higher standard than most of them were built to initially.”
Residents in very-high fire zones also have to maintain “defensible space” within 100 feet of homes and buildings. Trees need to be trimmed, dead or dying vegetation must be removed and brush must be cleared.
County fire departments in L.A. and Orange counties conduct more than 200,000 brush inspections each spring to ensure compliance.
In addition, state officials are drafting new “Zone 0” rules mandating that residents in very-high fire zones remove flammable plants and materials from the first five feet surrounding homes and buildings.
Statewide, the size of the the very-high fire zones — where residents must maintain defensible space and have inspections before a real estate sale — increased to 1.16 million acres, up 35% from 860,000 in the 2011 maps, according to Cal Fire numbers. The combined high and very-high fire zones, where construction must comply with stiffer building codes — reached 2.3 million acres in the updated maps.
New builds affected
The new fire designations will affect efforts by The Foothill Catalog Foundation, a nonprofit group up of architects and other housing professionals creating pre-approved home designs families can use when rebuilding.
Homeowners will be able to pick a design from the foundation’s catalog, with much of the permitting process already baked into the product, said founder Alex Athenson.
“Certain areas and properties indeed are going to have different restrictions based on their location within the fire maps,” Athenson said.
Nic Arnzen, vice chair of the Altadena Town Council, predicted some residents will object to the new designations, but believes it will be a pretty isolated group.
“Overall, I expect acceptance,” Arnzen said.
L.A. County has yet to approve any building permits in the Eaton fire area, Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger said Monday. But the county fire department will work with planning and public works departments to provide guidance for rebuilding requirements in high fire hazard zones, she said.
Inland Empire changes
In San Bernardino County, areas under very-high hazard designations now include the unincorporated area south of Redlands and west of Calimesa, as well as an area north of the 210 freeway in the city of San Bernardino.
In Yucaipa, the size of the very-high fire zone increased to almost 10,100 acres, up from 6,679. Another 941 acres have been added to the high fire zone.
“We went … to being completely surrounded,” said city spokesman Joe Pradetto. Yet, he said, the state doesn’t provide any money to cover the cost of increased brush inspections.
In Riverside County, an area along the Santa Ana River where homeless people have started fires for warmth or cooking is now a moderate hazard area.
Maps in three phases
Cal Fire began rolling out updated fire maps in February, releasing maps for Northern and Central California in three prior phases.
Berlant said rapidly changing weather delayed the updating of state fire maps.
Over the past five to eight years, California weather has changed “faster than ever before,” he said.
“The ability for us to pivot to building a new (mapping) model, to be able to incorporate these changes, as well as predict out into the future, has taken us a while,” Berlant said. “And we really wanted to ensure that the newest addition of these maps were as accurate as possible.”
Cal Fire hopes to release the next update in five years, he said.
Two fire scientists say it’s a given that Southern California will have repeated wildfires during dry, high-wind episodes. The problem is the lack of preparation for those fires, they said. And the cost of preparation is dwarfed by the cost of the fire losses.
“The problem is not wildfire or the wildfire hazard, which is a given. It’s how do the communities respond to that wildfire,” said Jack Cohen, a retired research physical scientist with the U.S. Forest Service who worked in Southern California during the 1980s. “And we have abundant empirical evidence that the communities aren’t responding very well.”
SCNG staff writers Anissa Rivera, David Wilson and Brian Rokos contributed to this report.