The California Forest and Fire Protection Department published updated maps of the Firefighters gravity zone for Los Angeles County for the first time in more than a decade on Monday, adding more than 440,000 acres to the Danger Areas of the County, including a 30% increase in zonal acres in the highest gravity qualification.
The statement, which includes the entire southern California and marks the end of the agency's two -month -old state implementation, establishes a clock of approximately five months for the City and County to receive public information, make adjustments and begin to impose high fire safety regulations within the new areas.
The new lime fire maps are only for areas where local firefighters departments, such as the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, are responsible for responding to fires. Previously, Cal Fire only mapped the highest gravity rating, “very high”, for these areas of local responsibility. The new maps include the “moderate” and “high” areas of Cal Fire too.
Cal recently updated the three areas for the areas where the State responds to fires in September 2023. However, the last time the agency updated its maps for the areas where local firefighters departments are responsible was in 2011.
The city saw its surface in the “very high” area by 7%. The addition of the new “moderate” and “high” zones led to the total area in the areas of danger of fire that increased by 24%.
However, the areas not incorporated in the Los Angeles County that depend on Lacfd saw their surface in the “very high” area more than triple. A large part of the unbuilt areas, which constitute more than 65% of the county and include Altadena, the outskirts of the areas of Santa Clarita and Palmdale and the bridge hills near Whittier, are wild lands or exist in the urban interface of the wild lands, which are more prone to shoot.
“Today's release from updated risk assessment maps of Cal Fire … Underlines the ongoing forest fire crisis that California is experiencing,” said representative George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) in a statement. “We must act quickly already scale to protect our communities and make sure that insurance markets work for all.”
With the complete deployment, California as a whole now has more “very high” risk zone “than ever. Cal Fire mapped a large total of 6.8 million acres in the danger areas of the local liability area: the “very high” areas grew by 35%, from 860,000 acres to almost 1.2 million; Meanwhile, 1.2 million and 4.5 million acres were placed in the new “high” and “moderate” areas, respectively.
The maps of the danger zone of the danger are referenced in more than 50 sections of the California Law. They require that housing owners in “high” and “very high” danger zones follow safe construction codes for new constructions, including the installation of windows of several panels that are less likely to break with extreme heat and cover vents and other openings to prevent coons from entering the house. Housing owners in “very high” areas must maintain the defensible space around their properties and reveal the “very high” state when they put their homes for sale
The legislature has also required that local governments in augmented areas of gravity review routines routinely and explain the possible maximum stress in water supplies during a disaster. Local governments must also locate essential public facilities such as hospitals and emergency command centers outside the increased fire risk areas “when they are feasible,” according to the law.
Cal Fire originally planned to launch the maps in mid -January; However, the firmente storms of that month forced the agency to be delayed, since it transferred important scientific resources to support shooting and help efforts.
In the new maps, the Pacific Palisades and Malibu remain covered under a “very high” red zone, as they did in the old Maps of Cal Fire of 2011. Altadena, on the other hand, remains largely without zurros, which indicates a lower than “moderate” danger, as it did in the old maps.
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Zones of severity of fire danger proposed in areas of local responsibility
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Forestation and Fire Forestry Department of California
Sean Greene Los Angeles Times
A Analysis for the times He discovered that only 21% of the properties within the perimeter of Eaton Fire were designated as a “very high” fire danger. However, an independent evaluation of the public benefits company First Street had identified 94% as a risk of “severe” or “extreme” forest fire, which means that they had at least a probability of 1 in 7 of experiencing forest fires in a 30 -year -old window.
The Research Manager of Cal Fire, David Sapsis, who supervises Mapeo's efforts from the agency, acknowledged that the models that Cal Fire uses to create their maps cannot completely predict the dynamic propagation of forest fires in urban areas. On the other hand, the Cal Fire model explains the type of vegetation, the topology, the weather and the climate so that the areas of the wild land calculate the probability of ardor of an area and the probable intensity of the fire. From this, it calculates to what extent a fire would probably spill to urban areas.
The team also intentionally chose what he calls “Atypical” events Like the 2017 Fire Tubbs, because, they said, it would have led to too conservative zoning. Another atypical event: the Eaton Fire, which, like Tubbs, was driven by relentless and powerful winds that promoted the glow to a populated area.
First Street about something different. The company creates a virtual representation of California that includes the human vegetation and infrastructure of the urban areas of the State, and simulates how fires would extend, even in areas such as Altadena. If the Cal Fire model is a snapshot of how fire acts, First Street is a movie.
Sapsis acknowledged that he would like to use newer approaches such as First Street's in the future. For its 2025 maps, Cal Fire only made light modifications to its model, including the use of more updated climate and extreme meteorological data. He also used a new model to estimate how far the embers can set the areas developed.
Other changes in the real world, such as the new housing developments that changed the classification of an area of the wild to urban land, also resulted in modifications to lime fire maps.
In the last launch, which includes the entire southern California, including the counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange, the cities of Hesperia and Jurupa Valley saw the most significant percentage increase in zonal acres, with the total averages of the cities in risks that increased more than 35 and 45 times, respectively. Jurupa Valley saw its “very high” area expand from 226 acres to 6,195. Hesperia grew from 715 to 15,359.
The cities of Chino Hills, Lancaster and Santa Clarita saw significant increases in their “very high” areas; In the three cities, the areas grew by more than 13,000 acres.
The number of zonal acres as “very high” in San Diego decreased by almost 30%; However, its total area in danger zones still increased a bit thanks to the new “moderate” and “high” areas.
Only a handful of cities throughout the state saw decreases in the total area areas, including Rancho Palos Greens in the Los Angeles and Oakland County in the Bay area.
“I will be quite honest with you, before these maps occur, I thought that the very high areas of severity of fire were really going to arrive deeply in Altadena, and they have not done so,” said the deputy director of Firefighters of LACFD, Albert Yanagisawa. “I asked Cal Fire, as what happened, is there a reason why the maps were not changed, and what they said was, specifically, their model is for forest fire modeling? It is not used and should not be used to [urban] conflagration modeling. “
Until now, Cal Fire has refused to comment on what promoted changes in specific counties and cities.
Now, local jurisdictions have 120 days to accept public information about maps and work with Cal Fire to issue an official ordinance that implements them. In general, the ordinances enter into force about 30 days after they are issued. At that point, the augmented fire safety regulations would apply to new areas.
Local jurisdictions such as City and County can increase the severity of an area and add additional acres to an area; However, they cannot reduce the severity of the areas or eliminate acres from them.
These maps are a “critical tool to identify high -risk areas of fire and strengthen fire security policies in our communities,” said Kathryn Barger County supervisor. “For those who work to rebuild after Eaton's fire, I want to emphasize that these maps provide essential information to guide their reconstruction efforts. They reflect the latest fire risk assessments and help to ensure that our homes and infrastructure are rebuilt with security and resilience.”
Fire security defenders have attributed the continuous ascending trend of acre areas to a litany of development factors in fire -prone areas, changes in the ecosystem and climate change.
“Yes, climate change has obviously and absolutely impacted the seriousness of our forest fires and where they are happening, but long before there were climatic impacts, there were decisions for the use of land,” said Howard Penn, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, a non -profit organization based in California. “We have been extending wild land during the last 75 years with very little consideration of the impacts.”
This is a development story.
