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Laura Dyberg, President of the Mountain Rim Fire Safe Council, at Heaps Peak Arboreetum in Skyforest, CA, on Tuesday, February 23, 2021. “As a citizen, my world is my property,” says Dyberg. “And the Fire Safe Council, we educate our neighbors so not only are we taking responsibility for our property, but realizing what we do on our property impacts our neighbor’s property, which impacts the neighborhood, which impacts the whole community, which impacts the whole mountain top, which affects the forest.” Created in 1993 by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CalFire, the citizen-led Fire Safe Councils create a space for residents in fire-prone areas to meet with local fire authorities to learn about what to do before, during and after a wildfire.
 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Laura Dyberg, President of the Mountain Rim Fire Safe Council, at Heaps Peak Arboreetum in Skyforest, CA, on Tuesday, February 23, 2021. “As a citizen, my world is my property,” says Dyberg. “And the Fire Safe Council, we educate our neighbors so not only are we taking responsibility for our property, but realizing what we do on our property impacts our neighbor’s property, which impacts the neighborhood, which impacts the whole community, which impacts the whole mountain top, which affects the forest.” Created in 1993 by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CalFire, the citizen-led Fire Safe Councils create a space for residents in fire-prone areas to meet with local fire authorities to learn about what to do before, during and after a wildfire. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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Laura Dyberg admits she was once one of those laisse-faire types who did little to protect her home from wildfires. She assumed fire crews would always be able to take care of her home, in the high and rugged San Bernardino Mountains where she’d lived for 15 years.

But then she experienced her first large wildfire, the 1997 Mill Fire.

She’ll never forget how it destroyed 12 homes.

In the aftermath, her community blamed authorities for the losses — until they made the proactive move of creating a Fire Safe Council.

She says the biggest difference the council has made for the community has been to broaden their understanding of the role of the community and the role of fire departments in fire prevention and resiliency.

“As a citizen, my world is my property,” says Dyberg. “And the Fire Safe Council, we educate our neighbors so not only are we taking responsibility for our property, but realizing what we do on our property impacts our neighbor’s property, which impacts the neighborhood, which impacts the whole community, which impacts the whole mountain top, which affects the forest.”

Created in 1993 by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CalFire, the citizen-led Fire Safe Councils create a space for residents in fire-prone areas to meet with local fire authorities to learn about what to do before, during and after a wildfire.

And this is just one example of the many resources available to Southern Californians looking for solutions on how to prepare their homes and property for the growing threat of wildfires.

In 2020, California saw its worst wildfire season on record, and it’s communities like Dyberg’s that are getting hit hard. Living in the San Bernardino Mountains is a classic example of wildland-urban-interface, or “WUI” living — dense residential areas that sit within wildfire-prone areas. Nearly half of all homes built in the state between 1990 and 2010 are now in these zones, according to the Center for Insurance and Policy Research, meaning more than 4.5 million California houses and 11.2 million people exist within the WUI—more than ever before.

Making homes in these areas more “fire resilient” is increasingly seen as one of the solutions. For homeowners, this means hardening homes with retrofits designed to help buildings survive fire events, and cutting back excess vegetation to create a defensible space around property to make it harder for fires to ignite homes.

There are calls for Californians to think of wildfires like they think of earthquakes—to prepare as if it’s an eventuality. Perhaps it is.

Last year, over 4 million acres were burned by 9,639 fires, costing the state over $12 billion. Scientists warn that with a warming climate and frequent drought conditions, fire season is lengthening and becoming more catastrophic. Firefighting crews agree and say it’s no longer a season; they are prepared year-round.

“Fire Safe Councils provide an excellent opportunity for us to provide this information, [and] synthesize any information they need help understanding,” says San Bernardino County based CalFire Forester David Haas, who works with Dyberg’s council. “And then they can take it back to their communities and kind of act as those liaisons and the local technical experts for these topics.”

Dyberg is one of these residents-turned-fire-experts. Through the council, Dyberg has brought grant funding to her community to help pay for defensible space maintenance, like dead tree removal and curbside chipping. She says her community now works with fire agencies as a team tackling these and other challenges specific to the mountain towns dotted along the pine-covered ridge. If they didn’t, wildfire could easily wipe out “communities, our way of life, and natural resources that would take generations and generations to restore,” says Dyberg.Designed for SurvivalIn south Orange County, nestled between the rolling hills of San Juan Capistrano to the west and the foothills of Ortega Highway to the east, sits Rancho Mission Viejo, one of the state’s largest planned residential communities. But back in the ’90s when Jay Bullock first saw the area, it was a working cattle ranch with acres of potential.

He also saw a wildfire risk, and after talks with the local fire authority, they realized that building homes in fire risk areas in the same way and expecting different results against wildfires is the “definition of insanity,” says Bullock.

Bullock is the Ranch’s Vice President of Planning and Entitlement, which means he helps with the lengthy approval process that all new developments go through. He also helped shape the Ranch’s development plan that is known for its focus on making life easier, with quick access to grocery stores and recreation. But it also represents a response by a handful of developers in the state to make wildfire protection central in neighborhood design.

Living steps away from a working ranch and a 17,000-acre nature preserve full of grassland and oak-lined hiking trails also means the risk of losing it all to wildfire. So designing a community to give homes the best chance of survival can give homeowners some confidence against a perpetual fire season.

The solution to the wildfire risk at the Ranch was a fire protection program that was highlighted in the Urban Land Institute’s 2020 report on wildfire resilience strategies. They were recognized for using that strategy throughout the entire community and not just for the homes on the wildland edge, which can serve as a sort of blueprint for current and future communities.

The program includes a 110 to 170 foot defensible space perimeter around the community determined by the same type of computer modeling that firefighters use to determine fire risks like vegetation growth and wind patterns. On properties, homeowners must follow strict landscaping policies that encourage fire-resistant native plants and ban a growing list of non-native species like fire-loving eucalyptus and palm trees.

Also, every home within the community is “hardened” with non-combustible construction materials and equipped with indoor sprinklers. Originally these features added $10,000 to the cost of homes, says Bullock, but as state codes have changed and the practice has become more common, the cost is now minor.

“Because of some of the more newsworthy wildfires in California in the last few years, our potential home buyers are asking us questions about fire safety and we think it’s a responsible thing to do to tell them your home is built to the best standards available,” says Bullock.

Orange County Fire Authority spokesperson Captain Thanh Nguyen says he also finds that people are acutely aware of the escalating threats and the need to prepare. He says a lot of communities are working hard throughout the region to become fire resilient, and as more homeowners take these steps, it protects the larger community and improves overall outcomes.

“It’s an attitude that you want to go out and proactively protect your home,” says Nguyen. “The fact of the matter is, if you have this gigantic fire front that’s coming at your home, if you didn’t do anything to try to mitigate or lessen the intensity of that fire, you know it’s going to be difficult to protect.”

Living in Harmony

Rising above Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Mountains are known for their sweeping ocean views, impressive canyons and a Mediterranean climate that supports a diverse and colorful array of plants and animals.

Residents there chose to live in this natural environment, says Antoine Kunsch, Resilience Coordinator for the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, a land stewardship agency that serves the communities from Point Mugu to Topanga State Park.

“We want them to understand the different species and to help protect the environment that they decided to live in, that is so beautiful, while doing what they can to prevent their home from catching fire,” says Kunsch.

The need for better access to wildfire resiliency information became clear to Kunsch after the 2018 Woolsey fire ravaged portions of Los Angeles and Ventura County, including the mountains. It burned 96,949 acres, more than any for the area in recorded history, destroying 1,643 structures and killing three people. The Woolsey fire ignited the same day as the Camp Fire in Northern California, a shockingly devastating fire which destroyed most of the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

With all that destruction on display, Kunsch set out to create a new project, the Sustainable Defensible Space website. He describes it as a one-stop platform that joins the concepts of home-hardening and defensible space brush clearance that fire departments focus on with the native gardening tips that environmental conservation groups often support.

Kunsch, like the Ranch, encourages residents to choose native plants for their gardens, but he warns that is not a guarantee against wildfire. “If you have a fire-resistant plant that is not well-irrigated, not well-maintained, it will be a higher fire hazard than a non-native that is properly pruned and watered,” says Kunsch.

Because the Conservation District is a non-regulatory state agency, they can receive state and federal funding to help support the community with wildfire preparedness. Most recently, they received a grant in September to offer free home inspections that look for fire ignition risks.

During hour and a half appointments, Kunsch inspects homes from the roof down with the owners on site so that he can point out immediate risks. Some of the cheapest risks to fix are landscape maintenance issues like leaf litter and brush removal. He also sees a lot of homes with attic vent coverings that are too large to stop fire embers. He encourages vent replacement because up to 90 percent of home ignitions started during a wildfire are caused by embers that can travel far ahead of wildfire fronts and get inside homes.

These are relatively minor changes, but depending on the age of the home, the list can get long and expensive. “If I go to Pacific Palisades, very often the cost is not an issue,” says Kunsch. “But if I go to areas in Topanga or Agora Hills, sometimes all the houses still have wood siding. In that case, changing the siding is not a question because it’s way too expensive.”

The barriers to following through on home-hardening efforts are a challenge Kunsch is still trying to identify, including how to get entire communities to work together. Building community accountability is where Laura Dyberg’s Fire Safe Council thrives.

She works diligently to encourage her community to be proactive, using the local newspaper and billboards to provide gentle reminders to residents and mountain visitors about preparedness year-round. The concepts of defensible space and home-hardening are not new, says Dyberg, but she believes that because of human nature and the trap of thinking “it will never happen to me,” people need to constantly be asked if they are ready.

“There is always one more thing you can do to be prepared for wildfire,” says Dyberg. “And the more we work together, the better our communities will survive. Because the fire wants to go where it’s easy, and we’ve got to make it less easy.”

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