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Recognizing Your ‘Current Hand’

• Do any of you have any streets or communities with long, dead

end roads? (aka Fire Traps)

• Are any of your communities or forests full of dead and dying

trees?

• Have you experienced confusion during an emergency by the

public and law enforcement? (the fire is on my property when in fact, it is 2 miles away…)?

• Has your fire/law enforcement staff been overwhelmed by a fire

emergency?

Does your County have a history of Wild Fire?

Camp Fire – Nov 2018

Camp Fire – Nov 2018 153,336 acres 85 lives were lost 18,804 structures lost 13,696 single family dwellings 276 multi family dwellings 4,832 other structures (garages, sheds, etc.) Total structure losses > $20 billion Infrastructure losses??? Removal of dead and dying trees???

Nov 16, 2018 (8 days after the start

• f the Camp Fire in Butte County)

A comparison of the bay bridge in San Francisco California before the camp fire smoke and during. The shot on the left was taken November 16th and the one on the right October 14th. Both photos were taken from the same position

• n treasure island using the same

cellphone camera. No filter or effects were added to the images besides cropping and aligning.

Mitigation (where and how to build)???

An example that shows how Defensible Space made the difference in saving this house and property from a wildfire.

Fire Progression Map (0736 – 11/08/2019)

522 Acres

Fire Progression Map (0828 – 11/08/2019)

1891 Acres

Fire Progression Map (0900 – 11/08/2019)

4280 acres

Fire Progression Map (1001 – 11/08/2019)

13,149 acres Fire jumped 4.5 miles to the west of the Town of Paradise

Fire Progression Map (1103 – 11/08/2019)

22,096 acres

Fire Progression Map (1205 – 11/08/2019)

28,525 acres

Fire Progression Map (1307 – 11/08/2019)

33,481 acres

Fire Progression Map (1441 – 11/08/2019)

39,510 acres

Fire Progression Map (2349 – 11/08/2019)

69,879 acres

Planning and Emergency Services Key Steps

• Updates to Local Hazard Mitigation Plans (needs funding)
• Update Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment as required by SB

379 (needs funding)

• Updates to Safety Elements of General Plans per SB 1241 (needs

funding)

• Training – SEMS/NIMS, Drills (needs incentives)

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 1. Community Boundaries
• Protecting development from wildfire impacts at the edges
• Ventura thought they were safe be having hardened their boundaries

from fire (setbacks, defensible space, clearings, etc.) Suggestion: Still require/maintain community edge buffers, but don’t rely ONLY on them for fire protection…we must harden our communities at the parcel level.

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 2. Emergencies are OES and Fire’s responsibility
• NOT TRUE…it all starts with Planning (Transportation/Land Use)
• Coordinate and integrate your Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, SB 1241

(2012) (Fire), SB 379 (Adaptation/Resiliency) into your General Plan Suggestion: Get very familiar with your Local Hazard Mitigation Plan

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 3. “We’ll update the General Plan later…”
• SB 1241, SB 379, SB 1000 all need to be updated now
• Your General Plan needs NEW action items around Fire Safety
• Possible state funding to help with General Plan Update

Suggestion: Budget/Plan/Seek Grants now to update your General Plan to get into conformance with State Law…

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 4. Only do the minimum required by State Law…NOT!!!
• Even in rural counties, where regulations are disliked, we need to have

conversations about hardening “Legacy Communities” (our existing communities) to the fire risk, creating new programs to replace wood decks, cover gutters, cover eve vents, defensible space, etc.

• Think FIRE Prevention, FIRE Protection

Suggestion: Pursue grants, pilot projects to get funding for your Legacy Housing Communities that are vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 5. More subdivisions in Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)?
• Limit new subdivisions in High Fire Danger areas within the County
• No new subdivisions approved without real secondary access, withstanding

a wildland fire strategies that don’t just rely on evacuation… Suggestion: We need to take a serious stand against putting more people in harm’s way

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 6. Solving the Fire Danger issues in CA is not Mandates or Incentives…think AND
• Going to take both carrot and stick to make statewide progress in making CA a more fire

resilient state

• New codes help with new construction
• May need a Tax Incentive to get people to replace wood decks, new roofs, eve vent

covers, gutter covers (similar to tax rebates for solar…behavior we want to encourage)

• Explore the concept of a National Fire Insurance Program (similar to National Flood

Insurance Program)

• Work with the Insurance industry to create new programs to improve fire safety at the

parcel level Suggestion: Find partners to move these issues forward with our Legislature…they really do want to help!!!

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 7. For Legacy Community, what to do if you can’t evacuate everyone at
• nce?
• We must develop ‘Shelter in Place’ locations/strategies
• Phased evacuations
• Bottleneck evacuation routes – 2 lanes in/out, became 6 lanes out,

bottleneck at Skyway/Hwy 99… What happened to cause that? The plan

• nly addressed the first part of the evacuation strategy…(COG Challenge!!!)

Suggestion: Community Drills are critical to practice

Things that don’t work anymore…

• 8. Support CEQA Statutory Exemption for Fire Safe Council projects for

forest fuels reduction, if…

• The project is consistent with a County’s General Plan, and
• The project complies with established standards developed by

Registered Professional Foresters, the Board of Forestry, etc. Suggestion: We need to support fuel reduction programs as a part of

• ur long-term strategy (like painting the Golden Gate bridge)

Paradise, before the Camp Fire

• Incorporated November 27, 1979
• Elevation: 1,778 ft
• Population: About 27,000 people (about 86% white)
• 25.1% of population were 65 or older per 2010 Census
• Median resident age: 51.7 years / CA median age: 36.4 years
• Estimated median house value in 2016: $225,518 (CA - $477,500)
• Median gross rent in 2016: $1,029
• Community Design: 3 major north/south roads, 1 north evacuation road
• Commercial Development: Mainly on the SkyWay, Pearson, and Pentz Roads
• No public sewer system – all septic…plus another 25,000 people in Paradise

Pines/Magailia

• Schools – There were approximately 3,500 students
• Estimates that 30-45% of the population had no insurance or were under-insured
• Average Median Household Income in 2016 - $47,533

…AFTER the Camp Fire in the Town of Paradise

• Contaminated water system…may need to be replaced ($20 million)
• People whose homes didn’t burn may need to replace their plumbing
• Damaged and destroyed road network – 100 miles public and 100

miles private… (which will only get worse as debris is cleaned up over the next year) ($100 million?)

• Parcel lines are not known, parcels were created w deeds, not

maps…every parcel may need to be re-surveyed

• The whole town was on septic…time for sewer ($80 million)
• My question to the Town Manager when we met about 2 weeks after

the fire was out was, “Re-Plan or Re-Build?”

…and a little good news in the Town of Paradise

• They are going through a “Re-Plan” community engagement process
• Follow their journey to “Re-Plan” at “makeitparadise.org”

…and you can follow the Butte County Journey

• The County has held MANY community meetings so far…mostly on the

disaster and debris removal

• Now, we shift into our own community engagement on re-building
• Follow this project of recovery at “buttecountyrecovers.org”
• My contact information:

Tim Snellings Butte County Development Services Director 530.552.3642 tsnellings@buttecounty.net