Meetings/20190911

Wednesday September 09 2019 Fire Safe San Mateo County

wow a big meeting

• Casey S no longer with RCD.
  • rats, BCERT et al were just getting going with this guy
• Grant Discussion WRT Cal Fire
  • goal - originate request with a suitable local agency
  • sometimes a grant isn't "doable" due to practical resource issues
  • triage: biggest bang for the buck in a CalFire region
  • CalFire ( et all ) developes analytics for best grants
• MOney? where>
  • fire district fees, about 100M used
  • then distributed to local programs

$ 80, 45, 14 dist in past 3 years. downward curv

• • State Responsibility Areas (SRA's ) are first in priority. ( yeah us ! )
    • as time has passed the distributions have extended to adjacent areas
    • in this area grants come to "andy" for Santa Cruz and "sarah" for san Mateo, then polished and sent up to Sacramento
  • funding source == CCI California Climate INvestment ( senate bill 901 )
  • pollution fines believe it or not
  • Fire Protection Grants - smaller communities and neighborhoods
  • Forest Health Grants - larger areas. much larger areas.
  • 292 applications, applying for 190 Million
  • 26 regions get granted. 1 grant per CalFire unit. Units prioritize all grants
  • Bill 901: $200 Million x 5 years each. all multi-year projects
  • Grants are biased tword Low Income and Disadvantaged communities: ala Pescadero area.
    • bonus scoring for protecting habitats
    • fuel reduction - dead and dying trees near structures
    • Fire prevention Planning
    • fire prevention education
    • must be able to describe green house gas reduction
  • Low Income Areas are a goal for 35% of funding
  • non qualifying
    • small capital equipment
    • roads, bridges, structures, water systems
    • dead and dying tres which are not a threat to public health and safety
  • mapping; b y July 2020SRA areas will be mapped with data verification back models - model runs backward in time to post-predict fires. to validate model.
  • grans will be looking for evidence of inter-group collaboration
  • looking for CalFire recognition of issue

Presentation by FireWise USA

• Firewise USA - nation group from National Fire Prevention Association ( NFPA )
• works with locations for general fire planning
• focus on community scale organizations
• community volunteers, plus Dept of Interior, Agriculture and Forest Service
• average community participation is about 20%
• about 1500 FWise groups in country
• presents info to help reduce risk for residents and first responders
  • 80-90% of fire damage is due to wind blown embers, not 'trees'
  • relative safety of Redwoods in irrelevant, it's all our stuff underneath
• Firewise orgs in communities are not necessiarly a 503c
• no fewer than 8 homes in a community, no more than 2000
• complements FireSafe Council
• this org asks for 1/hr of committment per household per year.
  • easy peasy to pull off around here
• Insurance
  • insurance re-insureers never predicted the huge increase in wildfire damages
  • Hurricans and hailstormes previously more expensive. Many previous years a single hailstorm in Texas costs more than the nations wildfires
  • their risk models no longer work
  • emerging models are highly detailed. getting down to individual households and local geography
  • insurance carriers have been able to keep wildfire insurance very low, offset by hurricane and hailstorm insurance. They've wised up.
• strategies
  • mass data collection over last decade has helped
  • building code changes in 2008 helped
  • 5' no burn zone is confirmed by research and field observations
  • newer cladding materials last longer and are safer in fires.
    • no doubt retrofitting is expensive
  • 60% of Paradise was uninsured
    • 93% of homes which start burning are lost
    • too many fires to fight
  • last economicc ression caused a relaxation of zoning code reviews for wildfire. focus hadn't returned until recent disasters
  • California 2008 codes have been pushed back due to building and materials manufactuere pressure.