WHO’S NEXT?
Paradise was not unique. Several small towns in California are in the line of fire. They are all facing their own battle, but is it one they can win?
Impoverished towns in the shadow of Mount Shasta. Rustic Gold Rush cities in the Sierra Nevada foothills. High-dollar resort communities on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Ritzy Los Angeles County suburbs.
They all could be the next Paradise.
A McClatchy analysis reveals more than
350,000 Californians live in towns and cities that exist almost entirely within “very high fire hazard severity zones” — Cal Fire’s designation for places highly vulnerable to devastating wildfires. These designations have proven eerily predictive about some of the state’s most destructive wildfires in recent years, including the Camp Fire, the worst in state history.
Nearly all of Paradise is colored in bright red on Cal Fire’s map — practically the entire town was at severe risk before the Camp Fire raged through last November, burning the majority of
homes in its path and killing 85 people.
Malibu, where the Woolsey Fire burned more than 400 homes last year, also falls within very high hazard zones. As does the small Lake County town of Cobb, much of which was destroyed by the Valley Fire in 2015.
“There’s a lot of Paradises out there,” said Max Moritz, a fire specialist at UC Santa Barbara.
All told, more than 2.7 million Californians live in very high fire hazard severity zones, from trailers off quiet dirt roads in the forest to mansions in the state’s largest cities, according to the analysis, which is based on 2010 block-level census data. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says its maps show places where wildfires are likely to be extreme due to factors including vegetation and topography.
The maps aren’t perfect in their ability to forecast where a fire will be destructive. For instance, the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa isn’t in a very high hazard zone, but powerful winds pushed the Tubbs Fire into that part of the city, largely leveling the neighborhood in October 2017.
Coffey Park was built “with zero consideration for fire,” said Chris Dicus, a forestry and fire expert at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. “Fire was in the mountains — there was no consideration that fire would cross (Highway) 101.”
Cal Fire is making new fire hazard maps — ready in a year or so — that will incorporate regional wind patterns and other climate factors. In the meantime, experts say the current maps, created about a decade ago, still provide an important guide to predict where wildfires could do the most damage, in the same way floodplain maps highlight areas that could be hit hardest during severe storms.
The at-risk communities identified by McClatchy also should serve as a starting point for prioritizing how California should spend money on retrofits and other fire-safety programs, Moritz said.
California’s state-of-the-art building codes help protect homes from wildfire in the most vulnerable areas, experts say. But the codes only apply to new construction. A bill introduced by Assemblyman Jim Wood would provide cash to help Californians retrofit older homes.
“This will go a long way toward these different municipalities (in showing) that they deserve funding,” Moritz said.
McClatchy identified more than 75 towns and cities with populations over 1,000 where, like Paradise, at least 90 percent of residents live within the Cal Fire “very high fire hazard severity zones.” Here are some snapshots and the unique challenges they face.
Shingletown: Population (2010) — 2,283
Shingletown is less than one-tenth the size of Paradise but probably carries just as much risk.
Like Paradise, the unincorporated community sits atop a ridge, and is covered in tall trees and thick brush — ingredients for a major wildfire. Shingletown was originally named Shingle Camp, for the workers who cut roofing slats from timber to supply miners during the Gold Rush era.
“We grow trees like nobody’s business up here,” said Tom Twist, a member of the Shingletown Fire Safe Council, a volunteer organization. Twist, who’s lived in the community off and on since the 1970s, said that when the weather is warm he’ll walk his property, pulling up seedlings in an almost futile effort to eliminate potential fuels.
“I’ll pull 20 or 30 seedlings a day out of the ground,” he said. “It’s almost like when I walk over there, there’s 20 or 30. When I walk back, there’s another 20 or 30.”
Just like Paradise, escaping the ridge in a fast-moving fire wouldn’t be easy; Shingletown’s main drag is winding, narrow Highway 44. And, like in Paradise, the presence of an older population would make evacuation more difficult; Shingletown’s median age is 61, according to census figures.
It’s little wonder that when Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Cal Fire to develop a list of urgent fire-safety projects, a plan to trim 1,124 acres of vegetation along Highway 44 came up as the top priority out of 35 projects around the state.
Locals say they’re glad the state is paying attention to a problem they know too well. The community had to evacuate when the Ponderosa Fire, started by a lightning strike, hit in 2012. The fire burned 27,676 acres — 43 square miles — and torched 52 homes in the vicinity.
“We’re intimately aware of the dangers up here,” Twist said.
Nevada City: Population (2010) — 3,068
Since the Camp Fire, Vicky Guyette has looked at the 1-acre patch of untrimmed brush behind her mother’s Victorian-era home in Nevada City as more than just an unattractive nuisance.
Now, the brush is ominous — an ignition source that could torch the home built in 1859 that her family has lived in for five generations.
The same anxiety also applies to the cedars, pines and brush covering the hills around this foothill city of about 3,100 people, many of whom live or work in wooden buildings dating back to the Gold Rush era.
“It’s very scary, especially since it’s such a cute little town I’ve been living in my whole life,” Guyette said recently as she walked down the city’s historic Broad Street, which looks like it fell out of a photo from a museum exhibit.
City officials agree that the wooded draws, steep hillsides, narrow residential streets, ancient homes and thick urban tree canopy that define the character of the city also make it particularly at risk if a fire burns through.
In recent decades, the city also has had some near misses with fire, including one major close call.
In 1988, heavy winds pushed the 49er Fire through 52 square miles of western Nevada County, burning 312 buildings and dozens of cars.
“At the time it was considered an anomalous event,” said Billy Spearing of the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County. “It was not the normal for them then.”
With such fires becoming the new normal, Cal Fire is planning to cut a 1,802acre fire break in southwest Nevada County in terrain that hasn’t burned in a century, helping protect both Nevada City and the adjacent community of Grass Valley, home to more than 12,000.
Nevada City also embarked on an online “Goat Fund Me” campaign to raise $25,000 to hire farmers to use their goats to eat dense brush in more than 450 acres of city-owned greenbelt.
The goats recently chewed a swath through Pioneer Park near Margaret Rodda’s Victorian home, which sits on a steep draw above a creek. But she’s still worried.
“All it takes is a drunk with a cigarette,” she said.
The goats inspired Guyette. She said she might spend the $500 to put a herder’s goats to work on the thorny thicket of blackberries behind her mother’s house.
Colfax: Population (2010) — 1,963
On his first full day in office, Newsom visited the Cal Fire station in Colfax to announce new initiatives on wildfire safety. As he spoke to reporters, surrounded by first responders, he was standing in a city that could burn any summer.
“The people who live here have a true understanding,” said Colfax City Manager Wes Heathcock. “It’s always on the back of people’s minds, especially with the most recent fires, the Camp Fire. We have a similar makeup here.”
At night in the summer, Aimee Costa, who lives on a hill above the elementary school, sometimes keeps her window open, the better to hear ominous sounds.
“You’re laying in bed … listening for that lick, that smack, that pop sound,” Costa said, describing the sound flames would make if they were chewing pine needles, brush and leaves.
A former supply hub for gold mining camps, Colfax sits a few miles from the edge of the Tahoe National Forest in the lower-elevation Sierra. It straddles Interstate 80 and serves as the last major stop between the Sacramento metropolitan area and the Lake Tahoe region. Horses graze beside deer on large ranchettes in the rugged brushy canyons along the outskirts of the city.
The terrain poses a major fire risk. In July 2015, the Lowell Fire erupted near Colfax and chewed up thousands of acres along the north side of the freeway, forcing evacuations in adjacent Nevada County. In the years since, Heathcock said the city has been working with state officials on “fuelbreak” projects, including a spot near the high school and elementary school, which has been eyed as an evacuation site.
Gene Mapa, who lived in Paradise and escaped the Camp Fire with some family photographs — and nothing else — has relocated to Colfax, where he already owned a second home. But he knows he hasn’t escaped the fire risk; his property just outside the city limits would be threatened by a windy firestorm like the one that engulfed Paradise.
“With that wind, there would be no stopping it anywhere,” Mapa said.
Kings Beach: Population (2010) — 3,796
Situated on the pristine north shore of Lake Tahoe, Kings Beach is one of the most heavily visited vacation spots in Northern California.
That’s a big part of the problem. Because so much of the population comes and goes, it becomes harder to get people to treat wildfire risk with the respect it deserves, said Erin Holland, a spokeswoman for the North Tahoe Fire Protection District. One of the district’s six stations is in Kings Beach.
“It is definitely a challenge because we have so many homes that are vacation homes,” she said. “It’s really a challenge to educate those visitors . ... They want to have a camp fire.”
Tahoe’s vulnerability to major fires was brought home dramatically in recent years. The Angora Fire in 2007, while it was confined to the south shore area, left physical and emotional scars on the entire basin after burning through 3,100 acres.
Holland said getting the region’s property owners and visitors to observe “defensible space” regulations is particularly difficult. Those rules call for clearing brush 100 feet around buildings and include stricter rules regarding vegetation immediately adjacent to structures.
Violators can be subject to citations, but “the goal is to really educate people, to get people complying,” Holland said. “We go the education route rather than the citation route.”
Pollock Pines: Population (2010) — 6,877
Just off Highway 50, a few miles from the tourist haven of Apple Hill, Pollock Pines lures transplants from coastal California, mainly retirees drawn to the lovely stands of trees in the foothill community at the edge of the Eldorado National Forest.
Heather Campbell only wishes the newbies had a better understanding of what all that timber represents.
Campbell, a retired U.S. Forest Service employee who’s lived in Pollock Pines since the 1990s, is the head of the Pollock Pines-Camino Fire Safe Council, a volunteer group.
In the past few years her organization has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly from the state’s “cap and trade” carbon trading program, to trim vegetation on the ridgeline south of Highway 50.
That’s all well and good, she said, but more needs to be done. And the people of Pollock Pines, including the newcomers, have to realize what’s at stake.
“Here, everybody allows all the saplings and brush to grow and they don’t weed it out,” she said. “All these roads are incredibly dangerous, when it’s so easy to take out pruners. Take out your pruners!”
She said memories are still vivid of the Sand Fire in 2014. That fire burned 4,200 acres and 20 homes and came dangerously close to forcing a major evacuation in Pollock Pines and surrounding communities.
“They were going to evacuate 9,000 people,” she said. “They were predicting the fire to go to 27,000 acres, instead of the 4,000 they stopped it at.”
La Cañada Flintridge: Population (2010) — 20,256
Carol Settles and her family evacuated their home in La Cañada Flintridge during the Station Fire in 2009. But she isn’t terribly worried about a repeat performance — even though her home is on a dead-end street below a brushy hillside of the Angeles National Forest. Large electrical transmission lines run along the wooded draw behind her home.
“We’ve never seen a spark,” Settles said, referring to the power lines. “We’ve never seen any of that.”
Best-known as home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the outskirts of Pasadena, the upper-middle-class city has an aggressive fire-prevention program. The Los Angeles County Fire Department checks properties in Settles’ area once a year to make sure vegetation has been cleared and hazardous landscaping hasn’t been planted.
Fines can be issued for noncompliance. Recently, one of Settles’ neighbors had to saw off the top of a pine tree because it was too close to a transmission tower, she said.
Los Angeles County’s assistant fire chief, J. Lopez, said La Cañada Flintridge has embraced rigorous fire-safety standards, which include annual landscaping inspections and stringent fire-safe building codes. Lopez said La Cañada Flintridge also chose to place the entire city inside a high fire hazard zone, going beyond the recommendation of Cal Fire. That decision translates into citywide enforcement of its fire-resilient building codes.
But since 2008, on average only about a dozen new homes have been built in La Cañada Flintridge each year, meaning most of the housing stock was built before the rigorous fire standards were in place.
The city’s hazard mitigation plan notes many of those older homes still have “combustible roofing, open eaves, combustible siding,” and they’re on “steep, narrow, poorly signed” roads that make evacuations dangerous.
Thomas Caswell, who’s lived for four decades on a hilly, narrow, dead-end street not far from city hall, said he knows the greenbelt behind his house where he watches possums, birds and other wildlife also makes the community vulnerable to fire. It’s why he says he didn’t mind paying when the city told him he needed to hire a tree service to remove dying trees in his front yard.
Still, he knows such efforts probably wouldn’t do much good if the Santa Ana winds pushed a fire into the city. Fire officials said that La Cañada Flintridge could have burned in the Station Fire if the Santa Ana winds hadn’t stopped blowing. The fire burned 89 homes in outlying communities and 160,577 acres of forested lands, the largest fire by land mass in Los Angeles County history.
“Once it comes down the hill,” Caswell said, “nobody is going to be safe.”