Senate Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Water

The Joint Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee and Budget Subcommitee 2 hearing will come to order in 60 seconds. All right, the Joint Senate Natural Resources and Water and Budget sub two Committee will come to order. Perfect timing will come to order.

I want to thank and welcome everyone here in the hearing room and grateful to be doing this with Chair Allen who leads Our Budget Subcommitee 2 here in our California Senate. We know that wildfires are part of the natural ecosystem process here in California.

Whether it's plant animal species throughout the state, they're dependent on cycles of fire for food regeneration and habitat. For millennia, California indigenous people have intentionally set fire to land, improving ecosystem health to cultivate food sources and building the basketry materials.

In addition to not having as many fires in longer and drier conditions, hotter summers, all these things are causing extreme fire behavior, particularly on days where dry seasonal winds turn small ignitions into massive fires.

As California's population grows, more people are living on the edge of urban development and wildland areas known as the Wildland Urban Interface, or the WUIs. 15 of the top 20 most destructive wildfires of the wildfires, 13 of the 20th largest wildfires, and nine of the 20th deadliest wildfires have all occurred in the last decade.

Most recently, 30 people were people lost their lives tragically, and over 16,000 structures were destroyed in two Los Angeles County fires just this past January. We know that scientific research has shown that defensible space, an area around a structure where flammable vegetation and managed to reduce a structure's vulnerability to wildfires, reduces structure loss in fires.

Even more recent science has demonstrated that clearing the first five feet around a structure of most, if not all flammable vegetation and materials is critical to improving the likelihood that a structure will survive a wildfire.

This science was codified into state law by AB 3074, introduced by Assemblymember Laura Friedman, and signed into law by Governor Newsom in 2020.

The Natural Resources and Water Committee and Budget sub 2 are convening this hearing to understand the progress the state has made in establishing these new defensible space requirements and challenges in implementing and enforcing the new standards.

During the first panel, we're going to hear from Dan Stapleton, Executive Officer for Foresters Licensing at the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, who will provide an update on the proposed defensible space standards. And Daniel Berlent, our State Fire Marshal.

Department of Forestry and Fire Protection will go over how the Department is updating its defensible space inspection program to include these new standards. During our second panel, we will hear from scientists, local fire chiefs and and economists. Steve Hawks, senior Director for Wildfire Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

He'll go over most recent science and research that concluded a 5ft zone around structures is necessary. We'll have also Jana Valakovic, County Director and forest Advisor for Humboldt and Del Norte UC Cooperative Extension, who will provide information on how community organizations can support the state's public education efforts on defensible space.

We'll have Dustin Gardner, Fire Chief from Ventura County Fire Department, who will discuss the agency's experience in implementing 5 foot zones in Ventura County, as well as Tom Tim sorry Kawahara, Executive Director of the UCLA Zimmen Center for Real Estate, which will provide key takeaways from experts evaluating efficiencies and programs that might speed recovery in Los Angeles after the 2025 wildfires.

We're also going to hear from Members and the public on their perspective on this five foot defensible space zone. I would like to welcome everyone here and ask Chair Allen to also lead us in some welcoming comments for our hearing.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just want to say how grateful I am to have the chance to co chair this hearing today. We of course all went through something really crazy in Los Angeles earlier this year. A sobering experience obliterating so many of the homes in my district, Senator Perez's district.

And I know this is of course something that so many of the Members have experienced in the past. You know, this ultimately is about, we know it's about learning about everything we know from the past.

The fact that we know that 90% of home ignitions during these fires occur because of embers and kind of understanding the implications and then trying to take action. And so Zone 0 has been part of the conversation for some time.

We're looking for updates as to the progress where this is all going and I look forward to this discussion very much. And this is of real importance to, to folks up and down the state. So thank you Chair Limon. I'm looking forward to the hearing.

Thank you Chair Allen. Members, any other welcoming comments from any Members of the Committee? All right, seeing no additional comments, we are going to begin our hearing and we're going to welcome our first panel up. So I welcome our first panel up and that's Mr. Stapleton and also Mr. Berlundt. Thank you.

You will each have 10 minutes for your presentation and then we will open it up to our Committee to ask any questions. I want to thank every panelist in advance for making the time to be here today. Thank you.

Committee Members, thank you very much for the invitation to come here and speak. My name is Dan Stapleton. I am the assistant Executive officer. The board is currently looking for a new Executive officer after the departure of Edith Hannigan.

So my familiarity with Zone 0 is that I've sat through some of the meetings, but I have not actively participated. But I talked, talked with staff and I brought staff with me. If you have any specific questions about the regulations, she can help fill in those gaps. So anyway, just to begin with here, I brought a slideshow.

We're going to do a overview, a background of Zone 0, the board's previous work and the board's next steps. I hope everybody can see that. Yeah. Can you use the microphone? Close? Yeah. Yeah. I'll move this forward. Okay. There we go. So what is Zone Zero?

It's a new defensible space zone within the first five feet of a home or building. It's considered the most important area to keep clear of combustible items such as mulch, woody plants and reduce the risk of structure ignition by ember driven wildfire. Where is an ember resistance Zone Zero required?

Well, in the sra, the state responsibility, all structures according to Public Resource Code 4291 and all structures within the very high fire hazard severity zones in the local responsibility, per Government Code 51182. When will Zone Zero regulations take effect? Per the Governor's Executive Order in 1825, the Board shall complete this rulemaking by December 312025.

Simultaneously, we have to work on a guidance document as described in PRC 4291e. When the regulations are in effect and the guidance document is updated, the regulations will apply immediately for new construction and three years later for existing buildings and structures.

Combustibility items typically found in Zone Zero are fences and gates, landscaping materials, plants, decorative structures, outbuildings, garbage cans, recycle bins, vehicles, you name it.

Since 20 the board's work in September 2020, after AB3074 was made a statute, we've referred the Board's Resource Protection Committee and they created an initial work group that included CAL FIRE, the University of California Ag and Natural Resources, the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, and some local area of firefighting, Ventura, Southern Marin and Glendale Fire Department.

In 2023, the phase two of the work group expanded to include the California Fire Safe Council, City of Los Angeles, Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, Redding, Lakeside, Moraga. So you can see that we expanded it geographically across the state to include more agencies.

Recent work the board is gathering the latest Science on Zone 0, we're incorporating additional perspectives and input. Our government partners have identified some financial assistance through a climate bond. They're getting updates on Safer from Wildfire recommendations through the Department of Insurance Framework for Sustainable Insurance and securing economic consultants to complete standardized regulatory impact assessment. That's the CERIA.

We had a public workshop on March 4th and on March 21st we did a draft rule plead. We brought and brought together both work groups and feedback from previous resource protection meetings and public workshops. On April 7th we had a public workshop and the Board is currently revising the draft rule plea.

So March 21st draft rule plead states that no landscaping or other materials that are likely to be ignited by embers are going to be in Zone Zero. There's one exception. Potted plant.

It has to be five gallon bucket has to be non combustible and there's some consideration about what height those plants should be because as you know if something combusts it's going to have a flame length. If if it gets too high it could touch the building and start a fire.

Trees are allowed only if they are taller than the roof. They have no dead or dying branches and we have to trim the branches away from the structure. So if it's a tree Shorter than the roof it would need to be removed in zone zero.

If it's taller than the roof then you would need to clear limit up eliminating ladder fuels and you would have to have some clearance around the roof and around things like the chimney.

Perpendicular fences that are attached to the building cannot be combustible and they have to be made if something's not going to burn. And when you replace a parallel fence, the replacement cannot be combustible. Outbuildings must be built to Chapter 7a standards. And our next work is in we're going to revise the draft rule plead again.

We're going to have a May 12 workshop. In June, we're going to revise the draft regulations again, complete our ISOR and the ceria. And in June, we'll have more public meetings that start the full board formal rulemaking process.

In the third quarter, we'll have a formal comment period, public hearing, response to comments, revise the regulations and then complete the formal rulemaking process. With that, I'll take any questions if you have them.

Thank you. And we may do questions after both of you present, if that's okay. So thank you.

All right. Well, good morning, Chair Limone, Chair Allen, Members of the Committee, Daniel Berlant, California State Fire Marshal, and on behalf of Director and Fire Chief Joe Tyler, it's my honor to be with you this morning and to provide you an update not only on our efforts in defensible space, but on wildfire mitigation.

But let me start by thanking you, thanking you for your support in investments, new programs and policies in recent time and with the leadership of Governor Newsom, we have, with your support, been able to make major investments in wildfire mitigation efforts and support to the crucial part of our wildfire strategy in combating wildfires across our state.

You know, in the past decade, over 70,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed by wildfires. And a staggering fact, homes that ignite on wildfire have a 90% chance of being completely destroyed. So our goal here is to not let them catch on fire in the first place. And that is where this zone zero comes into play.

But I want to stress that we have a strong plan in the California strong plan here in California to make our state more resilient towards wildfires. And that comes from the California's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan. Now today my comments are really going to focus on defensible space on a community level mitigation.

But it's important to note and stress that in order to address our wildfire crisis, we have to have a strong fire protection and response. We have to address forest management, we have to have community level mitigation and then we have to have partial level mitigation.

It has to be all of the above approach for decades California has required by law that homes in wildfire prone areas remove dead or dying veget 100ft around their home, as well as providing space between plants, bushes and trees. Your staff did an amazing job in the background of really explaining what defensible space is.

But essentially our goal is to keep a wildfire from burning right up to the home while providing a safe place for our firefighters to do structure defense during a wildfire. A lot of science and research has gone into the requirements. You'll hear about some of those in the next panel.

And while our wildfire mitigations have made a measurable difference in protecting homes, we have learned that this first five feet, this zone zero around structures, continues without it to put homes in a level of risk and vulnerability. So again, you'll hear shortly about some of that research.

We've partnered with a number of organizations and academic groups to ensure that our wildfire mitigations here in California, including zone zero, are research backed. Now, it's important to note that maintaining a defensible space is ultimately the responsibility of the resident. To help Californians though in this compliance, we have over 50 seasonal full time dedicated defensible space inspectors.

And back to your investments. With one time investments over now several years, we've been able to augment that and double the number of inspectors that we have providing vital education information. Our goal is to visit every home within the state responsibility area, which is CAL FIRE's jurisdiction, about one third of the state.

Our goal is to visit every home once every three years. So each year we set a goal to perform 250,000 inspections. In last fiscal year, we were able to perform nearly 300,000 inspections, but those inspections were on approximately 200,000 individual properties.

We are working in collaboration with your staff to do a better job of reporting the exact numbers of not just how many inspections we perform, but how many individual homes do we inspect and what are the results of those.

And I'm really excited to share with you that we recently created a defensible space inspection dashboard on our website in an effort to provide not only you, but the public with more transparency on where our efforts are occurring and what we are finding when we are doing these inspections.

This dashboard has, has a significant amount of data that not only includes the number of inspections that we perform, but it provides a map where you can see localized subsets of those inspections and again, the outcomes. What are, what are we finding? What is the compliance at a much more granular level?

And so we will make sure to share that with Committee staff so that you have access to this new dashboard. But I want to talk a little bit about the support we're providing to local governments. Obviously, you're going to hear from Chief Gardner from Ventura County Fire here in a moment.

But we've made strides in the recent years to really not only increase the number of inspections we're performing in the state responsibility area, but the support we can provide to our local partners in augmenting defensible space work, both in the SRA but also in fire hazard severity zones within local jurisdictions.

A few of the proof points here of our efforts include the development of a model defensible space program. It was created to enable local jurisdictions to build their own defensible space program with their own enforcement efforts, their own local ordinance, all as a package.

One size, doesn't always fit all, but we at least provide them a framework to be successful at the local level with their own program.

We've developed a training curriculum to ensure that across the state, not only all of our CAL FIRE inspectors are being trained to the same standard, but we've adopted training across the fire service, ensuring that local governments have access to the same base standard of inspections.

And while there may be local ordinances and local unique components that get added on, we're at least ensuring that at the state and local level, everybody is getting access to the same baseline training in performing inspections.

And to take this effort one step further, with legislation in 2021 from Senator Stern, we developed a new program to train organizations like Fire Safe Councils or other nonprofit groups to help perform defensible space assessments.

Essentially, these groups can now augment the number of inspections we perform, maximizing now the number of trained individuals who can go out, perform assessments of defensible space and home hardening, and ultimately provide public education.

Our goal is then when we go out to do an actual inspection, that we are seeing higher levels of compliance because they've already been given the level of education and tools to ensure that they are compliant. To date with this program, We've trained over 300 assessors who have provided home assessments.

Now in 25 different counties, you can see their progress, their specific number of assessments broken down by county on our interactive dashboard that we've posted. So again, this training is consistent with our own defensible space inspectors.

So now we have state inspectors, local inspectors, and nonprofit groups all trained to the same level to ensure that we're doing more outreach and education to homeowners. And lastly, we have funded hundreds of millions of dollars, again with your support in local wildfire prevention grants over the past years.

And some of this funding has supported specifically the development of local defensible space inspection and education programs.

But what I'm more excited to mention is that as part of the governor's January budget that we have brought forward to the budget Subcommitee, we are proposing allocating $25 million from the climate bond to provide a local homeowner financial assistance program.

Essentially, these funds would be provided to vulnerable Californians to help them for those who can't afford to do the work of Zone zero in defensible space to help them ensure that they are compliant with defensible space. And so, again, as part of the budget, we have set aside money specifically to provide defensible space support.

But based on our research and our analysis from past wildfires, we have found that in order to have a home have the best chance of survival, they have to have both defensible space and home hardening. There has to be this connection of the two and home hardening.

Again, you are all very familiar and educated on wildfires, but for the public that's watching, home hardening is essentially building or retrofitting homes and other buildings with construction materials that are both ignition and ember resistant. So essentially it is a fire resistant armor around the home.

And since 2008, California has arguably maintained the most stringent building code in wildfire prone areas. For nearly 15 years, we've required again these materials in wildfire prone areas. And we've continuously incorporated the latest technologies, the best practices, materials, building techniques to improve this code.

But our challenge is the fact that 90% of homes in wildfire prone areas were built before this code. And so this is where our effort has to continue to be focused on retrofitting or helping homeowners with home improvements around their home. Now, I'll just quickly mention we are also very focused on supporting vulnerable Californians in home hardening.

So to support those who can't afford to do this work or can't physically do this work, in 2018, we collaborated with Cal OES to build a financial assistance program on home hardening retrofits. Currently, we're piloting this program in six counties. San Diego, Shasta, Lake, El Dorado, Tuolumne and Siskiyou.

With nearly $20 million of investments of yours, we've been able to leverage nearly 100 million from FEMA hazard mitigation dollars to essentially provide each of these homeowners in these neighborhoods upwards of $40,000 for prioritized home hardening and defensible space. We have incorporated Zone Zero while The regulations have not yet been finalized.

We are still incorporating a zone zero in all of the homes that we are hardening. To date, we've hardened two dozen homes, and as we speak, another two dozen are being retrofitted. There's a whole host of challenges and barriers to this program.

Leveraging federal dollars is not easy, admittedly, but that is what this pilot has been working to do. But our goal is ultimately to be able to retrofit up to 2,000 homes and then also build a framework that local jurisdictions can use to address their own challenges in home hardening efforts. So I'll end with this.

To protect communities against wildfire, it has to be a tiered approach. We have to do all of those things that I mentioned at the top. We have to have a strong fire response. And again, you have completely supported our ability to increase our firefighters, our equipment, our technology. We have to continue to address forest management.

And the climate bond funding proposal that's in front of you continues to make sure that we're prioritizing forest management. But for this conversation, we have to keep focused on community resiliency, preparing our communities for wildfires, hardening our homes, ensuring that they have defensible space.

You know, with the peak of our fire year just around the corner, it's critical that all Californians are taking steps now to prepare for wildfires. So I very much appreciate the time you have given us.

This is a passion item for many people in this audience and I know many people on the dais as well and so look forward to answering any questions you might have.

Thank you Members. We're going to turn it for questions or comments. So Senator Choi, okay.

Thank you very much for your presentation. We know this wildfire is a very big issue. As time passes, more and more destructive fires we have experienced.

I come from Orange County and also had the chance to tour the damaged areas in Altadena, California about three weeks ago and have seen damaged homes and surprised to see some homes were very much untouched and standing in the middle of many destroyed homes.

And I wonder whether you have done any study among those standing homes of what the characteristics, common ground you can find. You mentioned two different areas, defensible space, in other words, from forest to house, at least 100ft and with a strong wind, 100ft is not going to work, but it's better to have 100ft.

The other one is home hardening, home hardening area. You mentioned less fire resistant materials. I don't know what they are, but my previous home, I know that the builder gave Me an option they would like to pay a little more. And your timbers were wooden materials were all treated as fire resistant woods.

So I paid more for that. And I should have claimed more for that when I sold the house. But I forgot about that. Luckily I didn't have to test it whether it was gonna really work or not. But I felt a little bit comfortable.

But I don't seem to hear any promotion of that kind of how well it is working for those kind of treated woods. Will work or not, I'm not sure. Maybe if you know, you can tell me. That's one area.

And when I briefly served in the Orange County Fire Authority as a board Member when I was, I believe a City Council Member or Mayor of Irvine at the OCFA board and during the time I promoted and also even I introduced bills which for whatever reason it did not pass. Let me elaborate.

Number one was that when the embers are flying by the wind, each house has a ventilation duct and that's the source where the ember would be sucked in. Because I hear, I understand that the air, the ventilation duct pulls in the air into that. So ducts are very prone to be sucked into the house, inside the house.

And there's no way you can stop the fire if the embers are sucked into that ventilation duct. So my Bill was let's give some tax credit for homeowners who are installing enclosable air ducts.

So at the time of evacuation or wind blow so they can manually or automatically shut it from open space, shut it off just like car ventilation in your car, that system. And that may prevent. So that's one idea still I believe in.

If that is prevalent occurring catching the fire for homes among your inspections, maybe you can advocate that. And I could introduce that the same Bill if that is going to be effective way of preventing the house fire. Number two is that I did not introduce any Bill.

But I was thinking and then I advocated this kind of ideas very crazy wild idea when I talked about that at the OCFA Board Meetings. But I still believe that most likely embers will stuck in non ventilation areas anywhere and house eaves. Right when amber flies and it gets stuck if there's a house, Eve will catch that.

So why can we build a house with all the sprinklers under the eaves and turn on the water? Because that's the beginning point with a beginning contact point with the amber with the house. So just like inside sprinkler system that we require now, I mean inside is already too late.

Already Protecting furniture, whatever, rather than inside, I think outside prevention is better. So installing, requiring all the new homes with the sprinklers in the eaves around the home, the roof, that may be first step. And the second one maybe on top of the. Nowadays most of the roofs are tile, so tiles may be resistant.

But even then on the top, the sprinkler can be done, installed and the fire erupts. Then we can turn on the switch. It can just spray just like rain over the roof.

Senator Choi, you've shared a lot. Do you want them to respond to that first part?

I have too many ideas. I know I have five. I have a question.

Maybe we can have them respond. Respond to this part first.

Okay, so these are the prevention ideas. You know, if you can respond to me whether that will be home hardening method and we should legislatively pursue and make it work.

Yeah. Let me first start by thanking you for those comments and offering to connect with your team later on because there's a lot of good conversation here and some great ideas you have. Let me go back to the first question you had related to the damaged homes in the Los Angeles fires.

18,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, but as you pointed out, there were a number of homes within the perimeter of the fire that are still standing.

We have collected significant amount of data by both those that were destroyed as well as those are still standing, trying to determine and do an analysis to figure out what works and what does not. We have done that now for the last decade or so. So I mentioned the 70,000 homes damaged or destroyed.

We've collected data on all of those and done analysis. I don't want to get too much ahead because you're going to hear from a colleague of mine in the research space who will talk about some upcoming analysis, some preliminary results from the Los Angeles fires. But to answer your question, yes, we are doing analysis as we speak.

And the reason we do we collect all this data is to ensure that we're informing our building codes so that we're incorporating the best practices and the lessons learned from those wildfires. One item I want to note, you had mentioned the need for 100ft and whether that was enough space or not for flying embers.

As you'll probably hear again from some of the research folks, the hundred feet of defensible space is really to ensure that we don't have radiant heat keeping the wildfire away from the home itself to keep radiant heat, the heat distance from the fire itself. Embers can, like you said, easily go beyond 100ft.

They can go a mile, two miles based on the weather. And that's where home hardening comes into play.

But this zone zero conversation, this missing link, is that those embers go past the defensible space, past even fuel breaks, past six lane highways in some cases, and land then on flammable vegetation right up against the home and catch it on fire again. The research folks you'll hear in the next panel will expand on that further.

I loved your comment about marketing the building materials like treated woods and some other items. I completely agree. That is an area for us to continue to expand on is how do we educate homeowners on these things.

I will note the building industry has been an amazing partner in this effort in making sure that their Members, the builders, the developers are informed of the best practices. But I agree that there could be better marketing for homeowners.

When you go to buy your home, you don't necessarily see exactly on the top page what items have been hardened. But through legislation recently we do have disclosure requirements.

Now that homeowners in wildfire prone areas, the seller does have to provide to the buyer which items of home hardening have they done so that there's at least a disclosure, but more marketing could be done to your point. Lastly, you brought up sprinkler and it's a great concept.

We have not found though that external sprinkler systems are an appropriate requirement that we set in the code for all homes. There are some great manufacturers and great companies that will provide that. But there's no standard water supply, power. These all become some of the challenges.

But what we're committed to doing is continuing to look at newer technologies and making sure that our building code incorporates those.

And so hopefully you'll take me up on the offer to have the opportunity to sit down with you and our team because we'd love to hear more of some of these ideas and what you choose to do with them. To your last question about is it a good legislative idea, I'll defer to you.

But we would absolutely love to spend more time to talk about what has worked in the code and what are some of the new innovative possibilities for the future.

Thank you very much. I will sell my good ideas for free to you.

I love it. Thank you, Senator.

And in that spirit, we also have Senator Stern with some comments or questions.

Thank you. Madam Chair. I want to commend you for all the effort and the comprehensive look at things.

It's very comforting to have you at the helm and I know we've been at this a While, and it's painful to watch good ideas sort of just gestate and, you know, sit there and not yet come to fruition while things burn. So I know you share that, that urgency that I do.

I want to ask you a couple things. So on the Zone Zero front, there's a state piece and then there's a local piece. I know we're going to hear from Ventura County, who I think actually does an excellent job of this on the inspection front and using their fire Department.

But I have two counties, I have Los Angeles and Ventura. Is there anything preventing a city or a county from adopting Zone 0 right now before the regulations are adopted?

The answer is no. And we've been working with a number of communities. The City of Berkeley just this past month has adopted an ordinance that would essentially add a zone 0 into their jurisdiction so no local government could.

Again, the law will require homeowners to comply with the requirements based on the board's regulations when they get passed, but nothing has stopped local jurisdiction. South Lake Tahoe is another example of a recent community that has already, ahead of the state requirements, adopted a local ordinance.

And to your knowledge is in city and County of Los Angeles, have they adopted those regulations?

I don't want to speak for them, so I'm not aware.

And then on the sort of secondary piece within that, that, that key Zone zero, not just in terms of defensible space, but the hardening piece, there are some high cost things that sometimes need to happen. I think of a Wood deck or the shingled roofs that are very tricky with older homes.

They're also the very cheap things mesh on your vents. And what can we do, not just from an incentive perspective, but from a regulatory perspective to make sure those sort of super low hanging pieces of fruit are picked.

And is that something that you all can pursue or is that something also that maybe the insurance side or the private side can be doing a better job of sort of pushing ahead on?

Yeah, it's a great question. We recently created what we call our low cost retrofit list. And it is a list of items that either are low cost, don't require a contractor, don't require a lot of time to do, one of those is adding additional non combustible screen meshing on your vents.

You can go to your hardware store for relatively a small amount of money, and most homeowners who are physically able can do that work. And so that low cost retrofit list has been very successful in that list though as well.

We have a number of items that maybe aren't necessarily low cost per se, but when somebody goes to upgrade their windows, for example, it is a low cost or a minimal cost to ensure that you're making sure one of those pane, making sure first off that it's a double paned window that you're replacing with that one of those pains is tempered.

And so those are some of the suggestions we've given. But we've gone beyond just posting a low cost retrofit list and kind of the standard educational items that is incorporated into the disclosure requirements that I referenced earlier.

So buyers in wildfire prone areas as part of their disclosure requirements and admittedly that packet is very large, but the seller is required to know which of our low cost retrofit list items have they retrofitted or is their home compliant with.

I know that's sort of at the point of sale or transaction, but before that, say someone's just living in that home. I mean, I hate to throw my parents under the bus in the middle of a public hearing, but I watch them go through a fire safety consultation.

They just had the mountain fire literally burn right up across the street from them and burn down a bunch of their neighbors properties. They got a big fancy new pumpkin and a bunch of other things, but their eaves are still open and their vents are still open.

And the fire consultant who came didn't recommend just doing, you know, something that maybe cost a couple hundred bucks to do. Is that something that can be. Are you seeing the insurance side push that as sort of mandatory now? Can counties be doing more of that?

What more than just a suggestion, you know, what can we be doing to sort of, you know, go one step beyond that? Because it's not necessarily going to make people a lot of money doing those projects either.

So for all the people doing these consulting projects and things like that, you know, they're going to go to the $50,000 retrofit versus the $1001.

So insurance side, can you speak to that? Yeah, we have done a significant amount of work with the insurance Commissioner and other stakeholders to align our wildfire mitigation requirements, including this best practice of zone zero. And so the Safer from wildfires framework that the Department of Insurance adopted a number of years ago follows our wildfire standards.

And so many of these elements that you referenced, but again, all of the building features, the defensible space requirements are the exact same items that insurance companies are looking for. You're going to hear from a colleague of mine from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Their research has been one of the north stars, if you will, to leading us to many of the mitigations that we now have in our, in our requirements. And so to answer your question, the insurance discussion is very complex.

And so I don't want to speak out of my lane, but I will tell you we've done a lot to make sure that insurance companies are following this same standard because many people are going to be driven by the need to have access to insurance or affordable insurance by following the insurance company's requirements to do many of these things.

To your point, though it's noted, I think we can do better at really figuring out how to get some of those low cost retrofit items in the arms of and in the hands of residents and homeowners.

Because you're right, if you go to a salesperson, they're likely going to sell you something more expensive, maybe an external fire sprinkler system, when there are some very meaningful and easy retrofits that a homeowner can do.

And so I would say that we'll go back and think through and come back with maybe some thoughts on how to do that.

But I will say that our defensible space inspectors that again, through one time fundings that you have provided us, we have doubled to almost 100 now inspectors, at least in the CAL FIRE jurisdiction, we are providing them information not just on defensible space, but on home Harding, which incorporates that low cost retrofit list.

Okay, look for that feedback. Thank you. Thank you.

Next we have Senator McNerney, then Senator Seyarto

Thank the chair. Dan and Daniel, thank you for your presentations. I'm probably the only Member here from NorCal, so our situation is a little bit different. One of the things you mentioned is combustible landscaping or non combustible landscaping.

I have gone to the Internet and tried to find a credible source about what's combustible, what plants are combustible specifically. I think that would be very helpful to have that kind of information. That would be very specific. Name a plant or take a picture of plant and find out whether that's combustible or not.

Also fencing, I mean a lot of houses are maybe less than 10ft apart and they have like a redwood wooden fence that's aging and could what's the story on those wooden fencing? And lastly you talked about the fire hazard zone.

Maybe 10 years ago you would think that the Palisades or the Altadena would be perfectly safe from fire. Now because the weather's changing, that's not the case any longer. How frequent are you going to be updating that hazard zone?

Great questions. First, I want to note that no plant is not combustible. Every plant at the right temperature, under the right conditions can burn. But there are definitely. To your point though, there are absolutely plants that are more fire resistant. We don't necessarily on our website list all of those plants out.

We're such a geographically different state that what you can plant in Southern California may not work in the climate zone in Northern California, but we've done a lot of work. In fact, I was this week at Green Acres Nursery here in Northern California and they have in every one of their nurseries a fire resistant plant list.

And so there are absolutely landscaping choices. We like to call it fire smart landscaping. It's not just about the type of plant that maybe retains more water inside of it, that doesn't die off or leave significant amount of leaves or other woody materials after the fact. But I think it's really critical to Note, and as Mr.

Stapleton mentioned in their work in the regulations, anything that's combustible, any type of plant that can catch on fire in that first five feet is really not something that we recommend. And obviously when the board finalizes their rules, we'll see exactly what that attends.

So again, we do not have a full list, but we do have on our website a whole section on fire smart landscaping, just without specific plants. To your second question about the Wood fencing.

One of the things that we saw and many of you saw firsthand in the Los Angeles fires is one home would catch on fire and then through flammable pathways like Wood fences would travel from one home to the next to the next to the next and it becomes a domino.

And so the effort that the board is under, and again you're going to hear from the researchers later on here is we have to cut those pathways.

We have to cut those flammable pathways and at least getting 5ft of that fencing to a non combustible material, whether it be a wrought iron fence or some other metal material, is going to be critical. Again, cutting off those pathways.

Lastly, on the fire hazard severity zones, as you all know, we just completed with the governor's Executive order, we just completed our local responsibility area maps. As you know, you know, there's mixed review on the outcomes.

You know, it is a challenge for some because so many more people are now being zoned within a fire hazard severity zone.

To your question though, and I still have to come back, thank you to legislation from Senator Stern and then through a budget change by the Legislature, we now have additional staffing that we did not have prior, so we can maintain the fire hazard severity zones. And our goal is to continuously update them at least every five years.

So the fence issue, you know, if you want to put a fence in, you know, people want to put in redwood fences. That's culture. And I looked around to try and find an alternative and there really wasn't any alternative. So we need to look at how, you know, is composite material better?

I mean, you know, and make that affordable. Because right now, if you want to put a fence in, they're going to put in redwood. That's just all there is to it.

Senator, your point though, about the culture? I think that's going to be the biggest challenge we're going to face. And I say we collectively in implementing this zone zero, because we are accustomed in California to having plants with flowers right outside our windows in many areas.

Wood fencing is, as you mentioned, not only affordable, but it's a great privacy tool.

And so I think, you know, based on the regulations, based on our work and education, again based on your support, I hope that we'll see more products come to the market that then will drive down the price so that we can get more non combustible options in not just fencing, but in all elements related to defensible space and home hardening.

Okay, one last question, if the chair will indulge me. Now, we're talking a lot about the screens, you know, on your attic that bring ambers in. Is there a standard on what screens are, you know, fire hazard preventable?

Yeah, there is a standard. Ultimately, we are looking for a non combustible material like metal and with an opening no larger than an eighth of an inch.

And new homes constructed follow that standard. But as I mentioned, that is one of the easiest retrofits and a very good retrofit to reduce risk, keep embers out of the attic and other parts of the house or building. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you. Next we're going to go to Senator Seyarto.

Much for being here and adding to the information that we need to help you come up with a comprehensive plan for California to deal with wildfire. To my colleague's concern over there, 10 years ago, yes, we still had this problem. It's just 10 more years of fuel management and growth that has occurred between then and now.

Instead of having a 20 year drive fuel beds, we have 30 year dry fuel beds. And without management, that is a concern. I just want to kind of give a little bit of a Layout of what I'm trying to get out of these hearings that we have.

It's all about information, information for us so that we can take a step back, understand what's already been done, understand what more needs to be done, and then come up with a comprehensive plan that addresses the fire prevention, fire response, and then also the fire recovery efforts and where we're falling short.

And a lot of those things don't really require legislative efforts, but there are some things that we may have to address legislatively when we're talking about regulatory efforts that hamper our ability to do things. And so those are some of the things that, you know, this is just one hearing.

I hope to have a few more because I want to resist, have my colleagues resist the temptation to run out and just. Right. Ledge, you know, to do all this legislation. And then at the end, we have this jumble of legislation that we don't know what fits where.

And so that's what, you know, from my perspective is what I'm after is trying to find out what more we need to do, because from there we can figure out how much it's going to cost. Because that becomes the big question of the day, is if we were going to make California Fire safe.

There is a price tag to that. We need to know what that price tag is. But in order to do that, we need to know what we need to get done. So I appreciate, again, you guys coming here being part of that conversation, and hopefully we will have many more conversations.

This is something that I know I am working on. Senator Stern is working on with me and others to try to make. Make this come to fruition, that now that we have a very motivated bunch of people, sadly, very motivated to do something about this. This. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.

All right, well, thank you both. I do have. Sorry.

Yeah, well, I just. I just wanted to get a better sense of. Of what. What sort of pushback you've been getting on Zone Zero out in communities. What. What are the kind of the biggest concerns you hear? And then also just a little bit about. About enforcement, penalties, fines, advice. You know, how do we.

Yeah, those two questions.

So. And just to be clear, because there's. The regulations are not finalized. Right. We've been really focusing on the concept of Zone Zero. You know, we've updated some of our educational materials based on conceptually, Zone Zero.

You know, a lot of the discussion that we have is very challenging related to individuals who don't want to remove or change the landscape, what they perceive to be the beauty. I Mentioned rose bushes and other flowering bushes right outside their windows. And in some cases, you know, in people I've talked to, their grandparents planted those plants.

And so there's a sentimental value. So that, that is one of those challenges. Again, we have a, for many Californians, a concept in our head of what a beautiful home looks like. And that incorporates plants and trees right around, right around the home.

And so how do you get that view and that vision to at least push it back 5ft? The other barrier that I would note is how am I going to afford to do this work? There are some things that, you know, I always mention that you can do relatively easy back to the lake.

The low cost retrofit list of home Harding. There are low cost Zone zero elements you can do. You can pull back the bark or mulch fairly easy. You can start removing perennials and other smaller plants and other bushes.

You can not store your garbage cans right up against the home, but push it back a little bit, five feet. But how do you afford to do the work? And that is why again, in the climate bond, as I mentioned, we are proposing setting aside 25 million just to provide financial assistance.

Because not everybody can afford to do this work. Not everybody can physically do this work. And so we believe that ensuring there's financial assistance is part of the solution. Those are just two of the, I think the main barriers. And better education, better socializing of the concept, I think will continue to make this an easier path.

But I just will admittedly tell you I believe that it's going to be a challenge on all of us, even at my own home, of making sure that we are implementing this zone zero. But again, the science is there, the research is there that it does make a difference.

Can I ask just about the areas beyond 5ft in state responsibility areas, how that process is coming along based on some of the. We've talked about this a bit at previous hearings.

Well, we're considering putting information that are recommended actions in a guidance document for outside of zone zero, where we can make a recommendation that, you know, to limit the heights of plants and things like that because of the flame lengths that could potentially impact.

Because you don't want to have, you know, a tall tree right at six feet that could, that's three feet high, that could throw six feet of flame. So the consideration is that, you know, we're trying to put this into recommendations that people can take.

It's not specifically part of the regulatory part of it, but it's something that would help people to understand what they can do in order to create a situation where they're not promoting the contact or the providing embers to the structure.

This just gets so tricky. Right. Because what about a tree that's growing maybe less than the height now, but it's on its way, you know, and again, I mean, how much do we really want to micromanage people's trees? But, you know, how do you handle a situation like that with a growing a younger tree, for example?

Yeah, well, if it's within five feet right now, the consideration is that you would take those out.

Yeah.

If they're taller than the home, you can limb them up and keep some clearance away from the house. So there's been some discussion about homes or buildings that are taller, much taller buildings. There might be some discussion and some information we'll put into the regulations with that.

But we also have to have science behind the things that we're doing. So it is quite complex and difficult to. To try to meet everybody's needs in this. But I think as far as the tree thing. Yeah, a smaller tree. I have one right now. It's a quaking aspen. It's about 10ft, but it's within 5ft. I'm gonna have to cut it out.

Yeah. And I'm gonna actually piggyback on this piece here. You said it was complex and we're talking about trees being within five feet. How do. Which law supersedes if it is also happens to be a plant, a tree that we actually are not allowed to cut down? Like, if I had an oak tree, which law supersedes.

I'm not an attorney, so I can agree with that.

So this is. Sorry, it was just, you know, as Chair Allen was bringing this up, it really caught my attention of saying we also have other laws in place about sizes, about growth. And I'm just not clear which supersedes.

And if I'm not clear, I'm guessing if someone out in the State of California happens to be in this situation, they may not be clear either.

I happen to be in that situation. I have CCRs that says I can't cut the blue oaks. Yeah, I don't know how I go about that. I would assume that there would be some state over or state. I guess the. I don't know. I'm looking for the word. But the state would overrule on that, you would think. But I don't know for sure

unless it's in writing.

So when we do inspections, you know, we are looking to ensure that those defensible space guidelines are followed. To your point, there are environmental requirements. One thing I would note that the actions of defensible space is exempt from ceqa. And so it really is on the homeowner to ensure that they are compliant with those defensible space requirements.

You know, are there some complexities related to homeowners Association, ccrs or other types of trees that you are required to have a permit? Yes, there may be other permitting that's required.

But to your question, specifically maintaining defensible space, and the guidance that we give and the enforcement we give is that they are maintaining that 100ft of defensible space, but doing it in compliance with any other laws or regulations.

Well, this will be interesting because I think even, even if we're clear that CEQA does not, you know, that this supersedes ceqa, if it, if it's about defensible space, I don't know that all of these, like this piece is under, all under ceqa. I think it may be under other statues. So I'm just fascinated here.

But also it speaks, I think, to the complexities that we are kind of rolling through in this issue. And so sorry, I wanted to see if our chair, Alan, wanted to, a.

Colleague did a Bill on ceqa, you know, for oak tree removal. Right. So, you know, anyway, there's a lot of, there's a lot of many layers to this.

So Senator, if I could add to your portion about enforcement. You know, I just want to, you know, make it clear because this has been a discussion item for many, many years.

We focus our inspections on education and we find that going out sometimes it's multiple times that our defensible space inspectors really are able to be more of a outreach and education tool, providing homeowners with not only the information, the knowledge of what needs to be done, but also with resources, whether it's a local chipping program that exists, whether it be low cost retrofit programs that exist, but we get to a 90% plus compliance through simple education.

Thank you. And I have just as I wrap up this and want to welcome the second panel that's about to come, I just have a question. You know, we talked about the regulations, their completion, the goal, you know, to be completed by the end of the year.

We also just in the last moments recognized some of the potential conflicts that we're having in trying to align these regulations with existing statutes and laws in our state. Outside of what we've mentioned in the examples given today, are there any others that we're trying to work through?

And are we on time to try to finish the guidelines by the end of the year.

I believe we're on time, but we have a very steep slope to do. This is very quick regulatory process that we're trying to go through here, but I think we can make it as far as to your first question, I don't know if I could answer that, but thank you.

Thank you. All right. So with that, I want to thank the both of you for your time, your expertise and sharing all of that with us. And it sounds like we're going to be having ongoing conversations as well. Certainly. I know that the Legislature wants to be kept apprised of how this rolls out.

I think not just the Legislature, the public. You know, there's been articles about this. And so we're really grateful that you're working on this and look forward to engaging more. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. We are going to welcome our second panel up now. So we have Mr. Hawks, we have Ms. Valachovic.

I'm trying so hard, Chief Gardner, and Mr. Kawahara. So we're going to go in the following order. Just so you all know. We're going to start with Chief Gardner, then we'll go to Mr. Kawahara, and then we'll go with Mr. Hawks and then Ms. Valachovic. Thank you.

There you go.

There we go. Thank you, Chair Limone, Chair Allen. Members, I appreciate you having us here. For the record, my name is Dustin Gardner.

I'm the Fire Chief of Ventura County Fire, and it is an honor to be here today in front of you in support of finding ways to make Californians have the ability for all that live and visit our Golden State to stay safe.

I will be discussing how defensible space in Zone 0 has been implemented and adopted in Ventura County and our continuous efforts to reduce the loss from wildfires that happen in and around our county on a regular basis. So let's start with defensible space.

And I know we've, we've discussed it, but I'm going to bring it to you from a local perspective of how we've implemented it over the years and learned to live with it culturally. So as it's been said, defensible space is a purpose built buffer between the flammable vegetation and the structures we all live in and work in.

It's a buffer that's planned out and prepared well before the first spark of a wildfire. And that buffer creates a space for your firefighters.

It's not a safe space, but it's a safer place for your firefighters to take a stand against moving wildfires, to deploy resources, to deploy hose lines, to stand in between the fire and your homes, and implement structure protection methods. It also creates another aspect of defensible space, and it's one that we don't often talk about.

And we saw during the mountain fire, or take that for example, in the first operational period, we had 11,000 homes in the direct impact of fire. There aren't 11,000 fire trucks in California that can be on a fire within the first operational period. So these defensible spaces give homes a better opportunity to stand.

And as Chief Berlant said, that it's a stance against radiant heat, it's a stance against direct flame impingement. It's not embers, as we all know.

And we saw in the Mountain fire, the Thomas fire, the Woolsey fire, the Eat and fire, the Palisades, all of them embers are traveling miles and they're, they're coming into homes through unhardened spaces. So we're just talking about defensible space right now and just that ability for homes to be able to stand to those fires.

So our defensible space program in Ventura County, and we talked about culture, it started 90 years ago. We've had it on the books. It started with 30ft. And we've learned over the decades that 30ft wasn't enough. We've studied fires, we've. We've looked at the impacts, we've looked at, we've progressed, and we've gone out to 100ft.

We've also learned through decades of doing this and inspecting this, that an ordinance or a code is no good unless you have enforcement. And each year, my board of directors mandates me to inspect 100% of all the structures that fall within that WUI zone and demand 100% compliance.

If the compliance isn't met, we have the ability to go in and clear those lands, and we put an assessment on the homeowner's property taxes so we can collect back from it. So there is a stick along with this law. And that sounds horrible, right?

That sounds like an overreaching enforcement of we're going to make you do this. But to put it in perspective, we inspect 18,000 lots per year and we find 99% compliance upon inspections. It's actually each lot that has to be cleared comes to me. And if you figure 18,000 lots, that's a lot to go through.

And it's usually less than a handful every year. Because our Ventura County culture knows that defensible space works. They know we're going to live with wildfire. We have to live with wildfire. And they know defensible space works. So our communities not only protect their own homes by doing it, they protect their neighbors homes.

So we have found through culture, through education, and through will, that we can get there. So a couple of questions have come up. How we get there. It's cultural change, and it will take time, but we have found that you can get there with defensible space. We've also heard today about home hardening.

Home hardening is that ability for your homes to stand up against those emberstorms, because we know that it's going to create a negative pressure with the wind, and embers are going to suck in either through your eaves, your attic vents, they're going to find a crack, they're going to find something.

We know that in Chapter 7a, and our folks that have written the fire codes and building codes have addressed that for homes in the WUI and the very high area. But what we haven't addressed, and it's been stated here today, and Chief Berlantz stated it well, is zone zero. And we know zone zero works.

Zone zero is a buffer all the way around the house that creates a zone with zero flammable material. And if you heard that means no mulch no flammable pants, nothing that can sustain combustion. Zone Zero is the weakest link in our fight to create a more defensible community.

It pains people, as Chief Berlant was talking about, to remove those flammable vegetation. My wife has been in this with me for 30 years. She knows firefighting, she knows loss in Southern California.

When I told her we were going to lead by example and I was going to take out her rose bushes in the front of our house, we had an issue. And she knows what happens in catastrophic life. She's been evacuated four times and we've still had an issue because those are our homes.

But begrudgingly she went along with me and we've created Zone Zero. But again, most people don't understand that and they don't understand the impacts of it as well. And it's going to be a tough fight. But our friends at ibh, at NIST with CAL FIRE, they have shown us the science, they have shown us the hard models.

And we know that if we implement good defensible space and we implement good building standards and we implement Zone 0, a home is 70% more likely to sustain a wildfire. Right? We all knew that if we put on a seatbelt, we'd be more likely to live a car accident.

If we wore a helmet, we'd be more likely to live a motorcycle accident. If we didn't drink and drive, we'd be more likely not to get in an accident. But these have been all hard changes that our legislators have made and they've made it a safer place for Californians.

And we have the hard science to back that up. We've adopted these codes for all of our new construction, all of our remodels, and all of our add ons and we're still getting pushback. When somebody asked the question about Zone Zero pushback, and we are, people don't understand it. They need more education.

So that's why we started with new construction, remodels and add ons. And we're working with our homeowners.

Our fire marshal, Joe Morelli is actually here and he has taken it upon himself to independently meet with each homeowner going through this to explain them the why, because it's, I think he told me yesterday, it's 2% more costly to do these things up front than on the back end.

And that 2% is a good investment when you look at the safety of a 70% reduction. But it still, it takes a tremendous amount of education and it takes a tremendous amount of courage for you all to adopt these regulations. We know that.

But we also know that past practice, our science that we're going to hear about and the regulations that our insurance Commissioner has taken to build safer from wildfire regulations, they're giving us a path. We know through partnerships with Fire Safe councils, we can educate, inspect and help our communities. We can find ways to live with wildfires.

We have to find ways to live with wildfires because California's the most beautiful place on the planet to live. We don't want to leave, we want to live here and we want to stay here safe. So with that, I will thank you for your time.

But more importantly, I want to thank you for having the courage and the dedication to ensuring that California continues to set the gold standard standards in fire safety, that we're finding ways to live with wildfire because wildfire isn't leaving. We know wildfire is getting worse. We know it's going to continue to get worse. And we have to find ways to live with wildfire in California. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. All right, next we're going to go to Mr. Kawahara, please.

Yes, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and to provide any guidance I can. Senator Allen is actually my personal Senator and I believe the Senator for the UCLA as well. So

Where do you live?

I live on a street called Malcolm, which is just below Wilshire, above Santa Monica. We've actually had you on campus as well for applications. I think when David Bill Carsley was working on your show. Yeah. So I was asked to test.

I may be a little bit out of the side of the box for some of these folks, but happy to be here. I was asked to report on something called Project Recovery, which is a 172 page road to recovery report that we put together with a couple of other organizations.

I'm going to give you a lot of information in a very short period of time. I have provided hard copies of the report to your staffs and our report is available for download off the Design center website.

As a background, the fires were obviously beyond devastation to Los Angeles on such an enormous scale and on an unimaginable human level. Everyone in Los Angeles knows someone who has been impacted. There was a sense across the real estate industry after this occurred that we really needed to do something to address the crisis.

This is largely a real estate issue. Within two weeks of the fire, the Ziman Center for real estate convened 50 plus CEO level professionals from the real estate industry in Los Angeles on campus to galvanize industry support for wildfire recovery efforts. Participants were handpicked for subject matter expertise.

We were later joined by the Urban Land Institute and the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC to strengthen our efforts and create maximum network effects and expand our pool of experts and influence. What resulted was the creation of several subcommittees organized around eight critical work streams.

We consider the city and the county to be our clients, effectively offering a technical business roadmap for recovery. Our report, which includes specific sets of recommendations and ways in which they can be implemented, was delivered within three weeks of the fire.

All of this work was done, by the way, pro Bono by some of the biggest law firms and developers and banks and capital markets folks in Los Angeles. The work streams included hazardous materials and debris management, removal and disposal and process for property owners safe return.

As you probably are aware, the EPA was the first in to remove the toxic substances and do the environmental remediation. FEMA is now in doing the debris removal that's ongoing as we speak. One big issue that has come up has been soil testing.

Many of the residents had deep health concerns and now there are even some business applications. So we've been in contact with several banks, the top 10 banks that issue mortgages in California, as well as insurance companies. And they are now considering requiring soil testing to issue mortgages insurance. So that would be a game changer.

It would mean that every homeowner would, by a parcel, by parcel basis, need soil testing. We do have a pilot program that's happening with our environmental science and engineering Department, UCLA, that I've been working with. They are testing 1,200 sites in both Eaton Canyon and Palisades fire. The initial results will be available in a couple of weeks.

We also recommended that there be a certification of completion, something that certifies to all these public entities as well as government, private agencies and financial institutions that would serve as a certificate of completion. Obviously, things are very fluid.

Recently our scientists have recognized something called off gassing, which we found that toxic gases are actually permeating from soft surfaces like couches and cushions and things like that in some of the homes that actually survived.

And then also our scientists also found that there have been elevated hazardous particulate debris in the hauling areas where the trucks are going up and down from these sites. Another work stream was implementing a building permitting self certification program. Quickly approving permits at volume is going to be really critical in this process.

It already is a long process. In Los Angeles, our center did a recent study on streamlining. It takes approximately five years to deliver an apartment building from start to finish, which is really unacceptable when we have a tremendous housing shortage. This is of course for the City of Los Angeles.

There is a concept called self certification that is allowing licensed architects, engineers, design professionals who have some level of experience, the authority to self certify building plans compliant with building codes. Many of these folks know the building plant codes better than some of the inspectors. And of course the buildings would still need to pass to compliance inspections.

This has been proven in some jurisdictions already in West Sacramento and San Diego. And also the potential use of AI and technology advancing some of these because it's really a staffing size effort.

I was pleased last night in my hotel room when preparing that I received an email from Mayor Bass office that she issued an Executive order authorizing self certification and AI, which I think was probably a result of our recommendations briefly on labor and supply chain issues.

The use of existing infrastructure needs to be utilized for things like logistics. That could be parking lots on the beach, it could be parking lot beaches, things like that. Resolve infrastructure scope asap. So there hasn't been a damage assessment of infrastructure in either of the fires so far, which is going to be critical to the.

And then a couple of the new issues that have come up since the report. Obviously tariffs, particularly as it relates to steel, concrete and lumber. 70 to 80% of our lumber comes from Canada.

And so if there are significant tariffs placed there, that would obviously be a tremendous challenge for rebuilding Los Angeles where most of the building is going to be sticks and bricks. Another area of concern that's emerged has been the labor market.

It was already incredibly tight in the US can remind you that 41% of construction workers in California are immigrants and even if they don't get deported, they certainly have a fear of showing up on job sites.

A big area of concern was, and I know this will be addressed down the road would be stabilization of California's insurance markets and rebuild. We believe that legislation for insurer underwriting models and consistent fire hardening requirements create a framework that requires insurers to factor in home hardening of defensible spaces when setting rates or renewing policies.

So that maybe addresses some of your earlier questions about insurance. Require Chapter 7 a fire resistant building standards and fire prone areas which may need to be expanded geographically. I know we're trying to define what is a high risk area now. Address lack of retrofits and enforcement of zone zero requirements which will allow wildfire risk resistance.

You know the ember casting. I was in Altadena at the time and I'm not sure that any amount of, you know, defensible space would have stopped essentially 80 to 100 mile an hour ember cast, you know, the size of footballs flying 23 miles away. So whatever we can do though obviously important.

The insurance Commissioner must guarantee adequate capitalization, clear policies and reinsurance to cover major losses. Implement aggressive forest management and wildfire mitigation which has been discussed. California must allow insurers to use a risk based pricing structure. This is targeted market adjustings. This does not mean broad deregulation and expand insurance market competition and facilitate support for underinsured and uninsured.

And of course we need to address the fair plan in California as well. Vertical building. Establish financial assistance for Fund for using public, private and philanthropic sources. Establish a non profit, private and privately run building resource center. This would provide a concierge service to homeowners who obviously are not experts in rebuilding.

They have questions about all the hardening as well as just permitting and finding General contractors and architects. So walking folks through the process in one of these centers. Establish a privately operated dedicated planning approval, permitting inspection and certification under one roof. A1 stop shop.

One very interesting idea was to create a builders alliance of home builders to offer turnkey rebuilding solutions for those who do not want a custom home. We think that many more people in the Palisades will want a custom home than in the Eaton fire.

But the home builders who already have their own architects and designs and multiple plans, they can rebuild at probably a $500 per square cost versus say $1,000 or even more for a custom built home. This of course will help homeowners if they have significant financial or insurance gaps. So we feel that there's a place.

Folks in the Palisades were very concerned about having sort of track housing and wanted to maintain the character. But many of these home builders have multiple plans you can choose from. They can do different setbacks and things like that to make it look unique.

And obviously we're not suggesting that we do rows of these homes, but maybe just one offs, but creating optionality for for homeowners in terms of financial strategies.

I won't do too much here other than to say that we explored tax increment financing vehicles at the local level, including things like enhanced infrastructure, finance district and climate resilient districts and rebuilding and infrastructure.

We feel like there needs to be some single organization or single agency in control of both the city and the county efforts preparing for funding shortfalls which I'll get into a little bit in a second here. Just for example Undergrounding the power lines is going to roughly cost between 2 and $3.0 million a mile.

If you add that up just for the Palisades, we're talking about $1.0 billion just to underground power lines. Obviously we need greater infrastructure for fire protection and prevention. And we also need to focus on rebuilding the civic infrastructure. So things like schools, parks, places of worship and businesses, without those, community is not vibrant.

So it's not just simply the building of homes. We did do some surveying after our report was released. The vast majority of impacted residents indicated that they prefer to rebuild and move back into their communities. But they are greatly concerned about the length of time, the cost to rebuild and the availability of mortgages and insurance.

On a going forward basis, the cost to rebuild the 10,000 plus burned homes will likely exceed $20 billion. And resident expects their insurance companies to cover roughly 70% of that cost. So these folks are all going to have gaps in what they're being reimbursed for in their insurance and what's going to cost to rebuild their homes.

4,000 homeowners may need financial assistance of $3 billion for the uncovered gap. That's roughly $500,000 average for Eaton Fire and $900,000 for Palisades. So anything that could be done to help those homeowners recover financially would be of great assistance.

We also did form under the auspices of County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, Blue Ribbon Commission that will focus on resiliency. UCLA faculty are providing the research backstop to support that effort.

It's going to focus on fire safe reconstruction, implementing fire resistant materials, defensible space strategies and climate smart building standards, resilient infrastructure, underground and utilities, expanding water storage and conveyance and hardening power grids, faster rebuilding, identifying resilient home designs and systems that could be pre approved to expedite construction and financial incentives to support building.

We by the way, anecdotally found that if it takes more than three years to build a home, most people are going to bypass that effort and simply move on from their communities. And of course, equitable recovery, reducing the risk of displacement, ensuring affordable insurance and prioritizing substantial support for vulnerable communities.

In closing, I'd just like to say that the work is not done. The hard work is just beginning. The recovery effort will take some five to 10 years and likely more. We are committed to providing ongoing expertise from both the private sector and academia in support of the evolving recovery efforts. And I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next we'll go to Mr. Hawks.

Good morning. Afternoon Chairs Limone and Allen and Members of the committees. I'm Steve Hawks, and if we could get the PowerPoint queued up. I'm Steve Hawkes, senior Director for wildfire at the insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or ibhs.

Across three decades at CAL FIRE, from responding to wildfires as a firefighter, to overseeing the department's defensible space, home hardening and damage inspection programs, and to the last two years at ibhs with wildfire research, I've seen firsthand the devastating impacts of wildfires.

So ibhs is a nonprofit organization that conducts research on how severe weather and wildfires impact homes and businesses. We identify the vulnerabilities and the mitigation actions that home and business owners can take to make their structures more survivable and insurable. In the wildfire lane.

Our primary focus is on significantly narrowing the path to urban conflagration by reducing the risk of home ignitions and mitigating the factors that contribute to uncontrolled structure, to structure fire spread. It's important to level set here and have an understanding of the factors of urban conflagration, what we're really trying to defend homes against.

So we have a wildfire burning. And that wildfire, when it's under drought and high wind conditions, is producing embers that can travel very long distances and are oftentimes the first order of the fire's entry into the community. When they land, they could ignite new fires around or on or in structures, leading to the spread within the community.

Meanwhile, the flaming front of the wildfire is encroaching upon the outer edge of the community, and through radiant heat and direct flame contact, could potentially ignite those structures. And when structures within the community Begin to ignite under those more extreme conditions with high wind, that wildfire really transitions from burning being a wildland fire to an urban fire.

Burning urban fuels, homes, outbuildings, fences, ornamental vegetation, Whatever is combustible within the community can ignite and allow for the spread of the fire through flames, radiant heat, and ember exposure. We've really honed in on three particular factors that lead to urban conflagration. And the first one is structure density.

So when homes are spaced closely together, that allows for the direct flame contact and radiant heat to ignite additional homes when one is burning.

Next is the connectivity of fuels or the pathways that a fire can take when one home is ignited through a series of combustible objects to burn to the next home in line, Particularly downwind igniting that home. And then lastly is the building materials that the home is made out of itself.

When you have homes constructed years ago pre building codes that have more vulnerable materials, they're much easier to ignite.

So, from over 10 years of wildfire research and validating these findings during post fire field deployments on the nation's most destructive wildfires, IBHS has created the Wildfire Prepared Home Program which is a systems based approach to meaningful wildfire risk reduction.

Mitigation actions listed in the red boxes protect a home from ember exposure inform the Wildfire Prepared Home Base Level designation. Adding on the mitigation actions in the blue box protects a home from embers, flames and radiant heat and forms the Wildfire Prepared Home plus level designation. These actions make a home more survivable and more insurable to wildfires.

Meaningfully reducing the risk of home ignitions requires a collective set of mitigation actions focused on the roof, the structure and defensible space. And all are necessary. And yet it is also true that removing all combustible materials from the first five feet around the structure, called Zone zero is the linchpin of this system.

It is fundamental to wildfire risk reduction. This is not a hopeful sentiment. The Centrality of Zone 0 to saving homes is rooted in lab experiments and post fire investigations. When we repeatedly see that Zone 0 is the area where embers land accumulate and ignite combustible items, whether vegetation or man made items like fences.

When facing blocks of ash where homes once stood, one can come up with innumerable explanations as to what happened and why. Yet ember protection remains the critical link. Absent embers, structure to structure, fire spread from flames and radiant heat stops at the end of the block. The fire crosses the street because of embers.

Embers from trees, bushes and undoubtedly unfortunately, burning homes. Embers bring the fire right to the home's doorstep. And even a small fire in zone zero or that first five feet can lead to the ignition of the home. This is the most critical area of defensible space.

To avoid misunderstanding, let me explain what our research does not show about defensible space. It does not require replacing all vegetation on a property with concrete. It does not prohibit healthy, well irrigated grass, plants and trees. It simply requires a buffer, the first five feet closest to our homes that protects our homes and our neighbors homes.

Five days after the start of the Eaton and Palisades fires, we were able to embed with the CAL FIRE damage inspections teams to conduct a post fire analysis. We spent seven days documenting information on structure density, connective fuels and building materials on over 250 damaged structures.

Between both fires we saw significant damage caused to structures from combustible Items in Zone 0. And starting from the upper left corner, working to the right and then down items like mulch, plants, fences, significant numbers of fences, debris and gutters. Large combustibles in the lower left corner that happened to be a hot tub.

But large combustibles can cause significant damage to homes, garbage cans and combustible items on decks. These are all near miss, being almost a loss. But sadly many structures were lost and destroyed because of combustible items located in Zone zero. So what's the path forward?

First, I'd like to acknowledge the significant investments made by the state and the programs that have been developed over the last several years, particularly the California Wildfire Mitigation program, the joint venture between Cal OES and CAL FIRE. They are making a difference. But where can we go from here?

First, the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection needs to complete the formal regulatory process to incorporate Zone 0 into the defensible space regulation. And I know the board is working very diligently on that and we are committed to at IBHS to assisting the board with that process.

Second, CAL FIRE must make meaningful improvements to the California building code, chapter 7A, based on research findings. And we have a grant with CAL FIRE to conduct structure to structure fire spread research. So we are very deeply involved in this process as well with CAL FIRE making meaningful improvements to chapter 7A.

And finally, California must continue to Fund grant programs to help California homeowners pay for necessary retrofits to make their home more survivable and insurable. And Prop 4 provides a lot of this funding. 25 million, as chief Berlant mentioned earlier, for defensible space financial assistance program, which I know CAL FIRE is well positioned to implement.

135 million for home hardening, which needs to specifically be earmarked for the Cal OES, CAL FIRE California Wildfire Mitigation Program. A lot of CALs in there. And then 185 million to the wildfire Prevention Grant program at CAL FIRE. Even with these investments, more long term funding and additional incentives will be needed.

Thank you for allowing me to testify before you today and I look forward to answering any questions you have.

Thank you so much, Mr. Hawks. Just as a FYI, this is the moment that I turn over the gavel. To Chair Allen as we welcome, of course, Ms. Valachovic.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure. Chair Allen and Limon and Members of the Committee and staff. It's a distinct honor to serve with this panel. We also had a subset of us yesterday with the Assembly budget, so I feel like we're on a roadshow, which is good stuff.

So, as I said, my name is Yana Valachovic and I work for the University of California. And as I said yesterday, I have one of the best jobs in the world. I know you guys have a good one too. But I have the privilege to be able to test and answer critical questions around fire adaptation.

And I get to extend that information to policymakers and I get to extend that to communities so that we can collectively build a more resilient future. It's the good stuff. It's really making a significant difference.

And while I come from the north coast For the last 25 years, my job has also enabled me to travel throughout the state and so I bring some perspective on other locations than just the north coast. So we're not just going to talk about la, but we are going to talk about the north coast too.

So I'm affiliated with UC's Fire Network where I lead in the community resilience and built environment space. And my research program has also included post fire investigations and a number of notable fires. I was with the IBHS team and the DINS team and some others in La, among other trips.

I've also written a recent paper on the effect of Chapter 7a and the building codes in paradise and looked at the effect of building survival as a result of improving our building codes where we do see a significant improvement.

And I'm also a registered professional forester and I've been co chair of the Board of Forestry's work group developing Zone Zero. So I know today's focus is really about Zone Zero. So that's where I'm going to lead in my talk here.

You know, as we've seen especially through the presentations today, California's been a leader in fire for a long time. And you know, our challenges with wildfire have been long known. But our memories can be short. Similar to earthquakes, it takes time for adaptation and mitigation strategies to be deployed and implemented.

And I just want to say with PRC 4291, we got started in 1965. This is not new to us, but we're getting better, we're getting more refined in that effort. And that's what created the first 30 foot zone of zone 00 to 30.

And then in 2006 we expanded that to 100ft after the Oakland Hills fire in 1991, which I lived in Oakland during the time it took another surprisingly two decades to create the California building code for exterior construction, which we've talked about as chapter 7A. And those codes were formally adopted sometime later.

So the public is aware of the fire problem, but their awareness is uneven and they like to deflect it. And they don't often understand that the solutions, that they can be part of the solution and that they are the ones that may need to change in this space.

Senator Stern, I'd like to evoke my mother as you have evoked your parents. I think it's a fantastic example. I would talk to my mom about these issues. She would say, what do you do? And I'd try to explain and she wouldn't understand, but she would always explain to me that the problems were her neighbors.

They weren't hers. And she didn't see herself in the solution. And like many others, she also saw that the issues were related to forests and forest fires and not that this is a whole state issue.

And if you remember, the immediate news around Los Angeles was again about a forest fire issue and how the national forests were being managed. And we have this stuck narrative that if you live under trees and if you live near a forest, that's what's going to be your your peril. Right?

But we know that we burn lots of different vegetation types in this state and in fact we lose more homes in non forested conditions than we do in forest fires themselves. So we have a tangled narrative. And Smokey the Bear's done a great job of really setting us up to that.

But we need to find ourselves in these issues to be motivated. Finding blame with others is of course always easier until it touches us personally. And as humans, we're not easily motivated. Right?

Wildfire is one of those chronic issues that reminds me of preparing advance directives, estate planning and documents that we hope will never be necessary until literally there's fire under our feet and we can't push them onto tomorrow's list. So, you know, where are we in all of this?

I included in your packet a little picture from the Los Angeles Times. And it's one of some embers around a building that has stucco construction, looks relatively modern. For those of you in the audience, there is a cement walkway in the middle.

And then the rest of the landscaping is with some mulch as well as some grass and other herbaceous plants. And there's a firefighter really struggling to try and address all the spot fires. You know, this to me is a fantastic illustration. How long does it take for fire fighter response to come to your house?

What do you say, Chief? Seven, 10 minutes, maybe eight minutes? How long does it take for an ember to start ignition in this base material? One to two minutes, perhaps. We have a great mismatch in our perception of the issue and the response that's necessary.

The public doesn't understand that the attached wooden fence or gate is a wick to the property. And I come from the redwood industry. I love to build with Wood and I will continue to build with Wood, but I will change in how I behave. There's a tremendous opportunity for innovation in gates right now.

We could build beautiful gates that could be more readily accessible and available at our convenience hardware stores and our building supply stores to be able to upgrade those attachment points because the fire may continue to come down the fence.

But if it, you know, as we saw in the last video, stops right at that metal gate, it's not going to transmit to the house. That's not a quantum change. It's a bit of a behavior change. It's a bit of an aesthetic change, but I think it's well within.it's all doable.

The public doesn't understand embers burn doormats, or that they ignite dry plants in pots or that the fire is likely to incur on garbage day. I can't tell you how many wildfire, how many fires I've seen on garbage day in which the garbage cans get knocked down and the debris gets spread throughout the neighborhood.

And that debris is largely combustible. It's a weird correlation. I don't know why. So, you know, we want simple solutions. We want a plant list. We want these things that we think are going to save us, but it's really about the right plant in the right place with the right care. It's very much a behavior issue.

And so how do we get to that space of being able to bring the public alongside with us? They want change, they want insurability, but yet not seeing ourselves necessarily in that issue. So, you know, the tree piece is an interesting conversation here. You know, trees are part of the equation in that they contribute surface fuels.

They drop leaves, they drop cones, they drop acorns, they drop branches. But those surface fuels are largely what's the bigger problem, not the tree themselves, as long as we can limb up the branches so you don't have a fire, climb up the ladder of vegetation to the canopy itself.

So, you know, in the absence of clear minimum standards, which is where we've been while Zone zero is being developed, it's been a bit of a wild west out there with all kinds of folks trying to fill the voids.

I feel more field, more calls from homeowners telling me that the insurance inspector came out and said to take down their trees, but said nothing about the mulch or woody shrubs surrounding the house. Again, back to this forest issue. I think we've really got to realign some of our messaging.

Zone Zero's completion will establish that minimum standard and put together a clear visual understanding so that we know which direction to head. You know, I recognize that we have few examples to point to. We don't have demonstration gardens.

We don't have a lot of, especially publicly visible locations where you can say, you know, here's what we've been doing, here's where we're going, and we can still see beauty, we can still see the aesthetic, quality, quality that we like to call home.

So, you know, I was brought here to talk a little bit about public organizations and non governmental organizations, you know, key to this educational message. And I just really want to applaud, you know, the CAL FIRE's damage inspection teams and the LRA folks because they've been doing a great job.

But we also need more trusted partners to help deliver the message and hold the public's hands in facing landscaping design changes. We need to let the public know that it's going to be okay. We can learn a lot from public health campaigns.

You know, we especially like in the COVID time period we had lots of folks delivering messaging around how to understand the issue.

And so, you know, we want to get to that place where you hear someone say, hey, my friend just showed me how she or they redesigned their gardens and it meets the new fire preparedness standards and it looks great, right? We don't have that yet.

We don't have people to hold your hand and say, I can do this. You know, I think about when you get the key to your house, when you buy your first house, it doesn't come with anybody that says this is the design features in the house.

This is how it works, this is what it takes to maintain it. Here are some of the things you saw in your disclosure, in your AB38 disclosures. Here's some of the things that you should be taking action on. We've got folks that do home inspection services, but they don't have a certificate of base knowledge related to wildfire.

I mean, we really don't have the qualified workforce yet right now to be able to give clear, consistent and comprehensive information around mitigations that matter, how to prioritize within that, within the scientific community. We have a strong understanding and we're strongly aligned within the fire professions as well around what to do.

But it's kind of a, a mess in terms of a lot of competing information right now without a clear way to train those folks. So, you know, in conclusion, I want to, you know, just say a couple things about Los Angeles.

I put a handout in there in terms of some of the things that I saw respective to Los Angeles. And it's just such a, you know, I want to put it in maybe one positive light in that we have now a large section of an urban population that can be rebuilt and redesigned to much higher standards.

And that, you know, is maybe the phoenix that rises from the ashes in this moment. And you know, it's going to be a good opportunity to show that fire adaptation takes adaptation and that it's not an action for others to take. It's an action for us to take together.

You know, we can do behavioral changes in other big national campaigns, and this is one that's going to take some sustained effort.

It's taken a long time to build California out in the way that it is, and it's going to take some time to turn that ship back and build it in a way for a brighter future and a more resilient future.

So thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts and I appreciate all of your hard work in this effort and how much, you know, you look at the frequency and quality of legislation that has come over the last decade, and it's really exciting to think about once we see all this stuff come into action, where we're going to be.

So thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Excellent, comprehensive presentations all. Let's open it up to questions or thoughts. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Senator McNerney. Senator Seyarto.

Great, because I got to go. Yeah. Thank you for your presentation. All of the information that you have in here is. Is information that we're going to need to be able to put into a plan that addresses the three areas I was talking about.

And right now it's like this avalanche of information, especially for a lot of my colleagues. Some of it I'm very well aware of.

But we've always struggled in the fire service to get to that part where people's attention span stays long enough to be able to get to that point where the public actually does understand the gravity of what we're dealing with and are now willing partners in doing their part so that we can do our part.

I did have one question about with the Ventura Chief there, when you have defensible space that's needed, you're doing the hundred foot, but the homeowner is only owns 75ft of it. And then behind that is conservation area, SRA area, county area, whatever area it is. Are there barriers that you see to being able to.

Because it is hard to explain to a. A homeowner that, hey, you got to get this down. You got to cut all this. You got to cut back limb up your trees. And yet just beyond their. But still within the hundred feet is other people's land that is usually public owned somehow. How are you dealing with that in Ventura County?

Senator, I feel like you've sat through some of our staff meetings that question. It is. It is a constant every year I'll say it's a battle. I say because we have different philosophies. The fire Department wants public safety, and I would prefer to see everything be ember resistant, non flammable.

And land management agencies would love to see everything remain natural and flammable. So we do constantly have that back and forth. Fortunate for me, we have a great working relationship with our state, federal and local land management agencies. And for the most part, they clear. Some of them unwilling and it takes some pushing.

But fortunate again for me, I have the support of our board and each of our supervisors will push that constant push on the folks above me if needed. And it does. It takes a lot of hand holding. And it is very real.

When we're requiring this of our communities and they look out their back and specifically, you know, national parks. We have a couple national parks in Ventura County, Forest Service Lands Conservancy lands. When they don't see it, they throw up their hands and say, well, if they're not gonna do it, I'm not gonna do it. Yeah.

And that's. I have one in Chino Hills Park. Same thing. Same thing. And that's when I was talking about figuring out or identifying legislative things that might need to be done.

Those are kind of some of the things we're talking about is enabling that to get done as opposed to going through permit processes for years and years and that never getting done. So with that, I want to thank you guys again. I have to get rolling and get over the airport or I'll never get back to the burn country.

All right, Senator Stern. Thank you.

Thank you all for coming. Chief Garner, I just want to build on that point on the. On the federal side. Fix our forest act pending in the House and the Senate. Looks like maybe a bipartisan agreement coming together around these issues. Have you all thought. I know. Mr. Hawks, you mentioned.

So then the importance of grant funding here. And we talked about the Prop 4 piece, which is the state piece. It's 25 million. I don't know how far that's going to go, but I was reading through some of the details on the. On Senator Padilla's sections on sort of expanding eligibility for some of the Wildfire grant management.

Have you all had experience seeing good work being done by federal partners on these fronts? Are there more opportunities, sort of leverage and. And match? I'm seeing some nodding, but if anyone wanted to weigh in. I don't know you, Mr. Hawks, or.

So going back, and I don't want to speak for CAL FIRE, but going Back to my time at CAL FIRE, we did leverage through the California Wildfire Mitigation Program, federal grant funding.

Was that sorry to interrupt you. Was that under U.S. Forest Service, or was that FEMA? . So that was like pre hazard mitigation.. Got it.

Hazard mitigation grant program funds.

Got it. And so the. As I understand the mechanics of the federal legislation pending right now, it's a lot of U.S. forest Service work and expanding sort of the aperture or the eligibility. So it's not just sort of deeper rural projects, but could be. You can't exactly speak to that.

I'm not familiar with what the latest legislation shows.

Okay. Any others? Any familiar?

I mean, I would just say the forest service owns 50% of the forest land in California. We need to do everything to keep them as a partner in all of this work. And, you know, their General mode is an all lands, all hands strategy.

So, you know, where we have those blended property lines, we really need solid partnership there, because there's shared responsibility in all of this. You know, I think the piece I try and talk to frustrated landowners about is, you know, lead by example and start at your home before, you know, you demand the action of others.

And that can you. You could replace that with federal partner, county partner, state partner, whoever it is that's on, you know, the adjacent ownership. But, you know, I'm. I've been reasonably pleased with what's in that piece of legislation.

And no, I'm encouraged by some of those provisions as well. And, you know, especially because, I mean, Senator Allen and I both share a lot of the. There's sort of that federal, state, national recreation areas.

I mean, Los Padres goes into the Ventura side, but in the San Monica Mountains, there's a lot of sort of mixed jurisdiction where it's sort of patchwork of state, federal, local responsibility areas all mushed up together. So we're really hoping that, you know, there's some way to maybe leverage.

I don't know if it's necessarily on the 25 million on the inspection side or if it could be sort of other types of grant funding, but would appreciate any feedback you all might have on that. My only other question was for Chief Gardner. I mean, just advice for other fire chiefs out there doing the hard stuff.

You know, we talked a little bit about culture, and it seems to me like when Ventura County fire comes knocking on your door, like there's just an inherent sort of respect and deference. I'm sure it's not.

Doesn't feel like that to you maybe sometimes where it's hard, you know, and you gotta talk about whatever it is, the bougainvillea with the trellis and the things that people don't want to talk about. But what, what's, what's working? How have you.

I mean, especially as we look on the other side of the border, on the, you know, on the other side of the county, my understanding is they don't have any Zone zero regulations in either Los Angeles City or Los Angeles County. You know, how have you managed to work through that?

Is that just a people power thing and sort of having like you were talking about your fire marshal, that, that sort of hands on, that touch, that human interaction that gets it, as opposed to just sort of the anonymous note on the door. How do you work through the hard ones?

And I'm not saying just like with your wife or with my parents, but like, you know, everybody.

That's a great question. Thank you. And I can't speak for everything going on in the county and City of Los Angeles, but I do know they put forth a lot of effort. I don't know about their Zone Zero, but I do know they do a lot of community outreach and involvement like we do.

And I think what we have found success with, I know we have found success with, it's constant community engagement. Like we heard earlier, people's attention span is pretty short. Fortunate or unfortunate, Ventura County, we continue to see these disasters, so it stays pretty fresh in memory and we continue to leverage those through constant community outreach.

You look at like our Firewise community program. Two years ago we had two, today we have 29. We're shooting for 50 by the end of next year. And it's just, it's continually working as partners because we can't do it together, right? Or alone. We have to do it all together.

So our Firewise communities, our Fire Safe councils, all of our 10 cities are all highly engaged in this. And we take it as a team approach and we have to. And it's constant communication, it's education, and it's just constantly pushing that rock because we have to. And that's how truly we found it.

Luckily for me, unfortunately, Ventura County is an extraordinarily compliant community when it comes to fire safety and risk reduction. Because they know the threats.

Have people been hurt?

They've seen it, yeah, year and year and year again. And I think it's just that continual push.

Somebody said earlier we haven't seen it burn into the urban areas like we have now, but these urban areas are getting, the urban landscaping is getting older, the homes are Getting older, drought is more tolerant and we're going to see it push in more and more.

So I think more fire chiefs and communities are just going to have to engage in the conference.

And when you guys are doing those inspections, in addition to the defensible space management, we talked about some of the other low hanging fruit, the mesh work, you know, some of those cheap closing your eaves, is that part of your, when you're, when you're doing that inspection, is that on your checklist there too?

And do you have the ability to make those, you know, sort of establish. Is there a compliance requirement there under your. On the county ordinance or is it sort of a, or sort of a suggestion? Hey, you know, you're either in or out of compliance based on vegetation.

But when it comes to the hardening issues, it's a little bit more of a soft nudge.

It's, it is more gray now. Anything new, construction, remodel, rebuild, they. It's a requirement. It's a lot of suggestions and education for existing. And we've got again, it's the leveraging the partnership. Our Fire Safe councils, they've put an all fourth effort into education and having one on one.

All it takes is an email request and a fire Safe Council Member or one of our prevention officers will come out and meet with homeowners and walk through the mesh. The zone zero, the home hardening yelp, starting at the cheap and going to the expensive.

Because we all know that, you know, replacing $50,000 worth of windows is not easy, but putting up $50 worth of screen is. Yeah. So yeah, again it's a partnership.

But at this point partnerships as opposed to a sort of the compliance side is really about the veg management in that zone zero. But these other pieces. So when you like that 99% number you said are in compliance, that's really about the, the veg Management Zone 0 as opposed to the homes themselves.

Yes. Now when talking defensible space, that is, that's what I was referring to, the 99%. Now when we do adopt, and I'm going to say when we do adopt zone zero regulations throughout because we're going to have to.

It will become mandatory inspections and we'll all have to learn to adjust and move resources and find out ways to do that.

But you don't have a sense of what our county's compliance looks like on that. On some of those other issues? I don't know, my fire marshal may. Yeah, no, I mean what would be a lot smarter than I.

What would be the mechanism for that, for determining. Right. I mean you don't have a yearly inspection process. You, there's no standard for maintenance of a home at a certain condition. It's really that real estate transaction space which is an AB38.

Right.

When, when action, that's insurance or insurance, which is handled through the private sector through a different process.

But we are, I mean we are looking actively at the home hardening Commission and starting to stand that up in, in concert with the insurance industry.

There's legislation pending now and whether there could be that sort of, you know, like we have good driver discounts if, if they were able to recognize some of those activities and at least, you know, you could go through all those little cheap retrofits and if you're in the wrong zone, they may still deny you coverage completely.

And that's I think very disheartening for folks like if they're going to go through those efforts and then they. There's no carrot, you know.

Right. I mean I've been actively talking about tax incentives and other systems to try and more broadly reach people that are interested because there's no guarantee out the insurance side. But you at least could guarantee that maybe you could have some financial break for doing that work.

And you know, just trying to tug at many sides of that equation right now so that people see that they can get some value out of the work. They know that the work is good to do.

But it's a strange valuation factor that they're always calculating to make, you know, a weighted decision that this is more or less important and they get some reward for it.

Yep. Well, I know we are looking at that idea of both the state, I believe at the federal level too, on the tax credit front. I think there are both those efforts pending.

I mean the hard part is, you know, when it's someone who owns a $5 million home and you're talking about using tax dollars to subsidize that activity and they might burn somebody's, you know, a multifamily residential home that's like, you know, it's, it's a tricky thing of who, who do you subsidize and how.

And I know the, the 48 or so projects that Chief Berlant was talking about. I mean that's painstaking work. Those are, those are transactions that are stuck in rural areas that are, you know, people are over barrel and they need to get that deck dealt with or that roof retrofitted and those.

So my sense is that the bigger projects have sort of soaked up Most the incentive money at this point. But. Yeah, how to find the right tool. I guess I would be curious, as you all kind of go back and maybe come back to our committees in the future, just to think of what are those tools?

I mean, is it that little carrot, is it 20 bucks off the mesh at Home Depot? I mean, even though it's only 100 bucks, is that going to do it? Or is it, you know, that a little bit of a bonus that gets recognized by insurance?

It's been easy to say, harder to do because there's a lot of other reasons they're not writing policies or insurance.

Costs are continuing to rise for other reasons. And so you don't see it in your premium because your premium went up, but your discount went down. And you're right in the middle there. I mean, every home in California needs improvement. That's, I think, the important thing to take away.

I didn't see a single home in Los Angeles that was really ready in any way.

Yeah. Okay. Sobering. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I just want to ask Yana, you know, just this whole, this whole question about the extent to which there may be conflicting environmental goals when considering Zone 0 requirements. So, you know, obviously we see the clear evidence of the value of defensible space in the context of a fire.

Yet we also know trees provide shade and the aesthetics notwithstanding. I mean, there's a lot of environmental, very serious environmental benefits associated with trees, including trees close to homes. How do we, how should we weigh competing or conflicting environmental goals when considering these rules?

Yeah, it's a terrific question. Isn't that the art of policy in essence? Right. You have multiple competing interests and you have to weight those at this point. Fire hasn't really had much of a strong weight in this equation in this decision making process.

And I think what is happening through this conversation now is really trying to highlight where those vulnerabilities are and really the risk that surface fuels play. So those are the ones that are on the ground and the ladder of vegetation that can carry that fire to the canopy or wick it directly to the property.

I think from a pragmatic perspective, we've got conservation goals related to energy. We've got heat load management, we've got water conservation standards. There's a whole lot of elements that are mixed into this equation.

I would be super, I mean, this is Yana speaking here, thrilled if we managed to get the combustible mulch away from people's homes and disconnect the fences and get the woody plants away from People's houses. That would be a quantum leap forward.

That would be changing the defensible space condition by a large load add, then upgrading the vents. And you know, in most people's self interest, they want to have a roof that's in good shape. Those are the three highest priorities that every home needs to take the tree piece.

You know, I think there's a lot more room for growth and understanding exactly where and what the risk is and what the consequence is of how we steward those trees over time. It's generally not a good idea to have a tree within five feet of your house. I mean, or your structure.

You've got roots that are running all over the place looking for your septic line, your water lines, they get into your foundations. You know, they're not always great neighbors. Backing the trees a little way from the house is a better strategy from a home maintenance perspective.

I think we have to talk about what people's self interest is in this and you can get some win wins by working slowly and carefully through those pieces.

Yeah. Okay. All right, I'd love to talk to you more about it.

A lot of the trees too, that are in the burn zones that are going to be rebuilt, it's a once in a lifetime chance to actually move where the homes are on the lot, you know, so that could be built into design as well.

And not only for the tree separation, but also home to home separation, trying to maximize the distance between those homes. Exactly.

I mean, have you looked at this idea of sort of fuel breaks not just within like sort of broader fuel breaks with the. With the wildland interface, but sort of intra community fuel?

I mean, I can tell you in west, in the Palisades, we've had remodels of these lots that go from lot line to lot line. I mean, there's really no space in between these structures.

Yeah, it's really looking at the pathways that the fire can travel within the community and disrupting those pathways through whatever means you can do to do that.

Okay. My other question was for my dear constituent. Yeah, I wanted to know a little bit. You mentioned something interesting about. About these kind of financing mechanisms that we should be looking at. You know, I think in this joint report that we. That's really great, by the way.

Talks about exploring financial tools such as resilience bonds, public private partnerships to invest in mitigation efforts and infrastructure improvements. I just want to see if you could expand a little bit on that.

Yeah, they've all been utilized before across the different jurisdictions. And it's Basically, I don't know if you're probably familiar with tax increment financing vehicles. And you know, we believe that you can probably raise up anywhere from 200 to $5 million in one of the, if you stand one up in each of the fires.

So we've been working with county supervisor's office, primary jurisdiction in the Altadena fire and then obviously with the city folks and county folks in the Palisades fire. And we're strongly encouraging that they, that they stand these tax increment vehicles up.

They're not unprecedented and we think that they need more exploration and we certainly have the expertise embedded within our group to advise on a pro Bono basis standing up these vehicles.

Okay, all right. I can put you in touch with several that put that together. Yeah, because we're working on something in that space.

So yeah, you know, we provided the playbook and now it's really up to, I think the city and the county to adopt some of them. As I mentioned earlier, the self certification and the AI stuff is being adopted.

But some of these larger, you know, particularly when we're talking about rebuilding infrastructure where we're going to be deeply underfunded, you know, the state budget is what it is, as you know, you know, our mayor was here yesterday telling you that we have an 880 or $1.0 billion deficit.

Not sure about the federal dollars coming in considering the relationship between the state and the federal, the new Administration. And so some of these other alternative financing vehicles I think are going to have to be utilized as well as probably philanthropy as well.

Okay, all right, great. All right. Really appreciate it. I think there's going to be follow up with us on, on various issues. So really, really thank you for, for all the insight and of course all the work that's gone behind, really studying all these issues thoughtfully and so thank you, thank you very much.

We're now going to have the chance to hear from any folks who want to make public comment, who want to come to the microphone, give you the opportunity. Just come up here to the microphone. But thank you everybody.

Good afternoon, Senators. I didn't actually come here with the intent to speak, but I'm Chris Ochoa with the California Building Industry Association, inspired by the, the home builders. I just wanted to emphasize a few things.

I mean, I was really glad that Chief Berlant, you know, mentioned that, you know, the home building industry has been working very closely with the state fire marshal's office. We're super engaged there. We've been working real closely with Steve Hawks and his Colleagues at ibhs, you know, we come to you all the time talking about bills.

You know, our industry has great concerns all the time about added costs to home building and the unaffordability crisis we have in California as far as housing, you know, whether it's extra codes, regulations, et cetera.

But the science we've seen is really clear here with non combustible construction and as was mentioned earlier, with Chapter 7a of the building code since 2008, the state fire marshal has provided us thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of data points from our worst fires in California.

And the data shows that those homes built to Chapter 7a since 2008 have a 3 to 7 times better chance of survival than those older homes. And so we've been building, we've been engaged not just with IBHS and the state fire marshal, but with the Cal Poly Wooee Fire Institute.

I serve on the board of the California Fire Safe Council statewide. So we're doing a lot. We're building master plan communities that not only have all the home hardening features on the home itself, but we can build these master plan communities with fire breaks around the community.

We can build them from scratch, you know, from the beginning with wider roads which provide better evacuation, more space for emergency vehicles to get in and out. There was a great story, you know, with the Los Angeles fires on the front page of the Los Angeles Times from the Silverado fire in 2020.

One of our master planned communities there, Orchard Hill in Irvine, folks, similar to the Los Angeles fires, 90 mile an hour winds, et cetera, similar conditions were evacuated.

And within a few days they were all allowed back into the community because not a single home burned down because of what we were able to do with the master planned communities.

And I'll leave you, we just recently with ibhs, we were down in Escondido just a month ago, a new community there, 68 homes, it's called Dixon Trail in Escondido. We did, you saw the example that Steve Hawks showed you, the burn demonstration, the side by side that IBHS does.

We did that at our conference last year in Anaheim in June. And one of our builders, our division President from KB Homes was there, witnessed it.

Went back to Escondido where we already had plans for this Dixon Trail and asked the city to revise the plans because they wanted to build to this wildfire Prepared home program which became Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood. And so we were down there for the groundbreaking.

But now this community has all the zone zero in addition to all the home hardening, all the non Combustible fencing. And correct me if I'm wrong, Steve, but we're the first nationally certified by ibhs, Wildfire Prepared Community. Now the first one of its kind and it's here in Escondido. So sometimes there are some added, you know, costs.

But again, the science is clear. And so just wanted to emphasize the points that are being make. The, the home building industry is behind the state fire marshal, IBHS, et cetera. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

Good afternoon. Sean Bellach with the California Association of Realtors. I realize we're getting close to lunch here. I'll keep my comments really brief. So. Yeah, of course we're going to be here. We're in the business of home ownership. Anything that goes to protect a household's number one asset we're obviously supportive of.

In the area of defensible space, as you know, we've created a special form for the disclosures, helping with the inspection process, home hardening. We're encouraged that, you know, hopefully this will maybe lead to some relief in the insurance area.

And always we appreciate the state's efforts in expanding the education and incentives for homeowners and rolling out these new rules. So happy to be a resource and thank you.

Thank you.

Michael Jarred with the Nature Conservancy. I'll be brief because I know I'm between you and your lunch. We really appreciate you having this hearing. It's a really important topic. The Nature Conservancy supported AB3074 and SB504 related to Zone 0.

We also commend the Governor and the Administration for moving forward on the regulations and for the expansion of the very high fire hazard severity zones. We do think that's a lot of change and that public education and community outreach will be really important. Several of your panelists recommended that as well.

So we would urge you to invest in additional community based education to really help homeowners know what they can do to still have the important other features of landscaping, including like shade, Habitat and aesthetically pleasing plants. Thank you.

Yeah. All right. Thank you. Good discussions. I really do appreciate everyone coming in. And I think there's going to be a number of things that we're going to want to work on coming out of this. So I appreciate it very much. And with that, we will adjourn this hearing. Thank you.