Assembly Select Committee on Wildfire Prevention

Joining today's hearing, we'll be hearing from Chris momentarily as well. Chris is a leader on wildfire prevention issues in the state legislature as we all know. And a lifelong resident of Sonoma County importantly was directly involved in the Tubbs fire recovery as a city council member and later mayor of his hometown. I also also wanna thank our panelists for their participation as you'll soon see an amazing group of folks.

It's gonna be a real robust, conversation today and, obviously, with the backdrop of the importance of this issue statewide right now.

Each of them has personal and professional experience related to the Tubbs fire and wildfire issues that is invaluable, to this hearing. Lastly, thank you to our staff, amazing group of folks who have put this hearing together, and Redwood Credit Union for hosting us. I also wanna really, give recognition and thanks to Redwood Credit Union for the role that amazing role they played as philanthropic leaders during the Tubbs fire recovery, particularly around the North Bay Fire Relief Fund.

It really became a national and worldwide model involving RCU, local officials, community members on how to respond to a devastating wildfire. Almost nine years ago, the Tubbs Fire marked a new era of wildfires in California.

It demonstrated that catastrophic wildfires were no longer limited to remote forests. They could rapidly destroy entire suburban neighborhoods with little warning. The fires also highlighted the larger systematic issue of the state state's century long focus on wildfire suppression rather than wildfire prevention. This model shifted dramatically after the Tubbs fire. For example, California's budget for resource management and wildfire prevention has tripled since 2017.

We see this change reflected in the legislature as well. Policies increasingly emphasize landscape level, fuel reduction, resilient communities, and adaptation to a future in which larger wildfires are expected, to remain a re reoccurring challenge. These are policies Chris and I work on every legislative session. This shift is made possible by the example that Santa Rosa and Sonoma County set for the rest of the state and indeed, in many ways, the world.

Overcoming immense devastation and tragedy, the region made significant changes to become more resilient and better prepared for future wildfires.

The Select Committee on Wildfire Prevention seeks to identify how these experiences have better prepared Sonoma County and Santa Rosa, for future wildfires. I know our colleagues, from around the state are very interested, in hearing this, and, of course, it is being, simulcast and taped today. We also wanna hear from our panelists and the public on how the state legislature's role in ensuring this community and others are more resilient in the face of a continuously evolving wildfire landscape.

With that, I will pass it over to Assemblymember Rogers for his opening remarks.

Thank you so much. I'll be very brief. I wanna thank Assemblymember Connolly for having the hearing. I will say I took office in the State Assembly. And less than a month later, we had the fires in Pasadena and Altadena and Palisades.

And it has been a constant conversation with our colleagues since then about how did Santa Rosa address wildfire, how did we recover from wildfire, and what have we done ever since then. And especially when we see comparisons of this community's recovery relative to other places that have experienced disasters, everybody wants to know what the secret sauce has been. And I always tell them that it's a blend of conditions, as well as the people that have been here, that have been doing the work.

Folks who have really leaned in from the city side, from the county side, from our community to take care of one another. And we oftentimes are talking about, how do we replicate those conditions elsewhere?

When I don't know that many folks know this, but when there are other enormous disasters, like the wildfire that happened in Hawaii a couple of years ago, Folks from Santa Rosa actually deploy to those areas, and end up helping because we have such an immense experience, and a track record of delivering for folks.

So this committee gives us an opportunity to really capture how that works, best practices, gaps that we still see in the existing services, and then bring that report and this this information back to our colleagues who represent across the state. And wildfire is not just North Coast issue.

It is something that every single Assemblymember and Senator is feeling in their districts, especially on weeks like this where it's really hot and you have wind that's blowing folks and just so that that's how we intend to use the information that we take in from here is to continue to export the good things that we have done and identify the gaps that still exist so that other communities don't experience what Sonoma County experienced.

Well said. So hopefully, everyone has a copy of the agenda. We're gonna get right into it. Calling up our first panel, which is Paul Lowenthal, Brad Sherwood, and Jennifer Burke. If you can come on up.

Good afternoon. Paul Lowenthal, Division Chief Fire Marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department. Happy to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to be here on the panel with the participants. Obviously, as some of them are Roger said, a lot of lessons have been learned here.

A lot of paying it forward that we've done since our fires and look forward to the opportunity to answer some of your questions here today.

Morning. Brad Sherwood. I am a resident of the Mark West Area Santa Rosa community, 2017 Tubbs Fire Survivor and Block Captain, and also Assistant General Manager for Sonoma Water, the wholesale water supplier for our region. And Jennifer Burke here is our favorite customer of our contractor community. Just wanna put that on record. I'm happy to answer any questions about addressing the block captain program.

Right. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Jennifer Burke. I'm the director of the city of Santa Rosa's water department as was mentioned. By my colleagues we were quite impacted by the 2017 fires and we had the unfortunate distinction of being the first water utility to figure out that there could be contamination from a wildfire into our water system.

During the '17 fires, I was in our emergency operations center and also was the lead of the task force to solve the contamination issue post fire and look forward to the discussion today.

Thank you and welcome to you all. So chief, why don't we start out with you and these questions were provided before, but really go to the heart of the matter. From the context of wildfire prevention, what were the most important lessons learned from the Tubbs fire?

Thank you. It's really interesting to look back to before 2017 when we were seeing a lot of the large scale wildfires devastating the communities of Lake Napa County, really with the Rag, Rocky Valley, Jerusalem, the list goes on and on. And we saw the potential here in Sonoma County. It was a community that really had dodged that bullet for decades, literally. And there's a lot of effort initially through grant funding, to try and bring awareness to prevention measures in 2016.

It was kind of disappointing to see that really the focus of the community remained on earthquakes. The Rogers Creek Fault was really the the focus of the community. We held community meetings across Santa Rosa, and the attendance was, really limited, unfortunately. Then came, the 2017 complex fires, and we watched both the Tubbs and Nun's fires, burn into the city of Santa Rosa. That, really shifted, our focus, here in the community of Santa Rosa, as well as across the entire county.

It was interesting to see, how the pendulum really shifted, and there's been a constant hunger for preventative measures, for education, for outreach, and that hasn't stopped. We have really continued to try and not only meet the past and current needs of the community, but look at opportunities to continue to engage with the community on future educational needs.

And that highlights kind of some of the roles that we've taken in also establishing partners with with FireSafe Sonoma as a county wide FireSafe Council, and watching agencies like us work hand in hand with the chiefs across the county and FireSafe Sonoma to continue to educate the community.

So you started to touch on this and maybe elaborate a little bit how the lessons learned have changed and or improved the city's wildfire prevention efforts?

Yeah. When you look at the lack of education on defensible space, home hardening, vegetation management, that was the first shift, but we knew that that wasn't enough. There you'll hear in some of the additional questions kind of the measures that we've taken, but kind of touching really quickly when you look at what happened in 2017 with, you know, 6,000 structures destroyed across the city and county to then fast forward to 2020 where the education worked.

And we had in just in the city alone, 1,152 properties in the city limits were impacted by fire. Meaning, they either had damage on the property, they were within the fire footprint, and to have only 32 homes destroyed in the city during that fire out of 1,152 properties impacted really speaks to the improvements in, prevention measures.

Yeah. How is Santa Rosa better prepared for wildfires now than it was in 2017? There has been some time at this point.

Yeah. That's quite the list, and I would be here for a long time. But, so, you know, some of the highlights were, from a a response and preventative measure, is everything from alert and warning, to to the the vegetation management ordinance that we put in place.

We've really looked very closely at the impacts that we experienced and, you know, I remember when Assemblymember Rogers was on council, there was comments that were made by the council at that point in time where the city of Santa Rosa can't afford to go through another devastating wildfire literally. And so that really became the the focus of implementing our ordinance, implementing additional staff, making resources available to the community to do everything that we can to to to mitigate that future risk.

As we sit here today, what would you say are the kind of wildfire prevention projects the city is most focused on?

Yeah. So we established our community wildfire protection plan in the city of Santa Rosa literally two weeks before the Glass fire. It was kinda eerie to present to council five year

And for the audience, glass, when did that occur again?

Yeah. So the Glass occurred in in 2020. Yep. And two weeks before the glass fire started, we presented our community fire protection plan, which was the first plan the city had to our council, and it identified the greatest risk to the city was the unburned property between the Tubbs Fire and the Nunn's Fire. And that's exactly what what ignited.

So we knew that there was gonna be impacts from that fire.

And if I if I remember correctly, FEMA had just denied a request for funding for some of that work?

Yeah. We can touch on that too. But the CWPP, for a lot of jurisdictions, is really, in some cases, unfortunately, just a boilerplate plan. Ours, we made a determination to make it really very in the weeds, no pun intended, and identified 64 specific action items and nine objectives. And it served as a road map for the community.

And some of those, as Assemblymember Rogers stated, were specifically to mitigate risks that were directly tied to what we were impacted by during the the, the Glass Fire. I happen to be, we didn't touch on it during my introductions, but I served as, kind of one of the lead, recovery, task force leaders for the 2017 and 2020 fires here in, Santa Rosa. So it offered me a lot of time with, director Fenton I'm sorry.

Federal administrator Fenton, director Gary Laduchi, unfortunately, got to know each other really well through some significant incidents. The CalOES director at the time looked at me and said, Paul, we can't keep meeting like this.

What are you guys gonna do to actually mitigate this risk so that we stop meeting in your city? I looked at our fire chief, and I looked at our city manager, and basically gave them the, can I be honest with him? And they said, go for it. So I looked at the director and I said, we literally put forward two projects, two hazard mitigation grant for for projects to Cal OES through federal funding and were denied both of those NOIs.

So you tell me what we need to do to to get funding.

We have two additional notice of interest that have been pending for quite some time, And sure enough, within about a week or so, magically, those notice of entries, were approved.

Thank you. And we know, zone zero, hot topic, kind of a lot of conversation around it still. How will the increased defensible space requirements in zone zero regulations play a part in local wildfire prevention strategies going forward?

Yes. That's a great question, and we have the, the proof to back up the, the benefits of it. When we saw that we were gonna be rebuilding literally thousands of homes within our local wildland urban interface as well as areas within the previously very high fire hazard severity zone through CAL FIRE, we knew it was our opportunity to take a proactive approach in the rebuilding process.

And one of the things that we did back in 2019 was actually establish a local ordinance called an ignition free zone, where we require that those homes be rebuilt with three feet of ignition free. Again, this was well before the zone zero and the five feet was a thing, but it was Santa Rosa's attempt at mitigating that risk knowing that ember cast directly played a role in the ignition of homes in our community.

Oakmont is a community in Southeast Santa Rosa. It's a 55 plus senior community, a Firewise community, very involved, with FireSafe Sonoma, with, our department, and they definitely are hungry for that information, very forward thinking, and they implemented some of their own requirements, that were similar to our ordinance as well as the potential for future legislation. They implemented defensible their own defensible space inspections on top of ours and really worked to mitigate that, that risk around that ignition free zone, and that quote unquote zone zero.

Fire chief Scott Westrop and I were actually both physically in Oakmont when the Glass fire was burning across Highway 12 and spotting, into Oakmont. We literally watched.

We had no engines with us, and watched embers rain down onto homes, up against the side of homes, hit the base of of the the home, and literally put themselves out. It was, as photographic memory. I mean, I have you know, you see the stories. You hear the stories.

You see the testing, scenarios, but to actually physically watch it, you know, it really solidified the the benefits of of that zero that zone zero and why we continue to support and and do work to not only minimize the zone zero, but other ignition sources around homes as well.

Yep. What recommendations do you have, for the state legislature to improve our fire mitigation and prevention capabilities?

I would say anything that can help streamline the turnaround times on grants, waiting, the amount of time that it takes to get through notice of interests, the request for informations, RFIs, oftentimes, that feels like the clock is being reset. And when you do that initial outreach with your community to whether gauge the interest, tell them about the grant that you're applying for, solicit the actual opting into the program in phase one. It's pretty disappointing to see the amount of time that can go by.

We actually went through a full request for information and a a change based on dollars and cents on a cost estimate. And literally, the the example on the state's website was in dollars and cents.

And that, you know, was one of nine RFIs that we went through for an HMGP. So I think anything could be done to turn around those the those times. And then also having resources for communities, especially once the grant is underway with a lot of the reporting requirements, whether it's HMGP, whether it's HCD. Although that is a new program and they're kinda learning it as they fly it. The reporting requirements are a lot different from one another and can be very impactful on on staff time.

Assemblyman?

Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for the context. When I mentioned folks from the city getting sent over to Hawaii, you were one of them. You get deployed all over The United States to try to assist folks going through disasters.

Do you see any consistent themes where if a local jurisdiction or a state had been a little bit more proactive, and I'm I'm not talking about just more vegetation management, but from a policy perspective, or from from a a coordination perspective, what would you say the top consistent themes that people do wrong ahead of an emergency are?

Ahead of the emergency or after the emergency?

Before the emergency or in the response to the emergency.

Yeah. So that's not the direction I thought you're gonna take that one. But

You're also welcome to take it however you want.

Yeah. No. I I I thought the direction in which I'll go really quickly was you alluded to it earlier. There's a lot of work that has taken place since the fires that have made Santa Rosa to where it's at today from a recovery standpoint. Yes.

We were deployed by Cal OES, but, ultimately, at the recommendation of FEMA, federal administrator Fenton saw the opportunity to take City of Santa Rosa resident City of Santa Rosa staff and embed them into Maui, really from some of the similarities between ... and Lahaina from just a density standpoint. That was was really a a golden relationship that is still thriving today.

Although, I don't wanna get ahead of myself, there's even been discussions of of establishing a sister city now between Santa Rosa and Lahaina just based on the ongoing relationships that are still happening, today. But we have, supported, obviously, communities across California. Santa Rosa was actually the first city to be deployed by Cal OES and mutual aid to Cal OES, meaning Cal OES typically facilitates mutual aid to other communities.

We went to LA as the first time the city of Santa Rosa actually responded mutually to Cal OES. We signed an MOU, watched the attorneys kind of struggle to figure out how to make that work, but then it was Cal OES' intention to deploy us and make us available to all the communities across Southern California. We've helped in Texas. We've helped in Colorado, South Carolina.

I I remember, actually, probably a couple weeks after Robert Pesipane from FEMA actually denied one of our appeals for fire station five.

They reached out and asked me a question regarding the response to the apartment collapse for how we handled something in Santa Rosa. I joked with him and said, I'll give you that information if you approve our denial. But, obviously, all joking aside, it's always what we've been proud of is helping those other communities.

I think one of the things that we are really hoping to see and we've started talking about a little bit is the communities that we've been involved in have been able to turn corners in some cases or be better prepared. Maui has referred to us as literally their crystal ball.

And it's really been fantastic. Although they get a lot of bad press that things may not be going slow as fast as people wanna see them, but don't forget there is truly island time, and things do take a lot longer over there, but we really have been able to forecast and work on a lot of their issues ahead of time.

What we hope is that there's an opportunity where we're losing a lot of the institutional knowledge that are people that have been doing this for ten years now. When you look at the city of Santa Rosa, there's only a couple of us that were part of leading task force and leading recovery and have been helping all these communities.

We're hoping to see is that when there's future disasters or future devastation, that there's almost equivalent of, like, an incident management team, but not an incident management team, more local government leaders from cities, from counties that have different areas of responsibility that can almost be deployed strategically into communities and be that liaison, be that help, be that that voice of reason, that kind of quick response team to at least help things, help point them in right directions, answer questions in those first couple of weeks that will hopefully then start start them in the right direction moving forward.

Yeah. You touched on something briefly that I think would be helpful for us to dig a little bit into, which is also you all can't do it on your own, whether it's zone zero, home hardening, vegetation management. You need partnerships with the local community, and with the state, whether between the state responsibility areas and the local responsibility areas. So how would you recommend from a policy perspective as we're trying to craft tools for local governments to utilize?

How could we help strengthen that relationship or give additional tools that doesn't take away from the fire department's preparation and response, but rather enhances and allows the local community to be more useful, I guess is the way to put it.

That's a good question. So, you know, obviously, we have Firewise communities, in our, throughout not only, Sonoma County, but across the state, and they have very, established rules, ways to certify them, the relationships with the overall Fire Safe Council. You know, not every community can support a a cert program to that level.

But it'd be really, I think, interesting to see what can kind of live with in between a CERT program and a a Firewise community that's more on the prevention sorry, the, the organized and prepared for emergencies that can have kind of a similar structure potentially that can get recognized, and then have access to whether it's grant funding, have a more established relationship with, with cities, with with counties.

It's interesting that, you know, COPE, which is very well known, Citizens Organized and Prepared for Emergencies here in Sonoma County, but a lot of people don't realize is that COPE was around and established here in Santa Rosa by Oakmont, well before the 2017.

And then COPE blew up and it spread across the county, and it's been doing great things. But it's been really a struggle to see what works in different communities and what doesn't work in certain communities. And so I think, trying to find that happy medium that allows people to be recognized as a actual, not necessarily Firewise USA, but get the designation from some level of organized and prepared from a community standpoint to help with that that overall education outreach and preventative measures.

Yeah. I I think one of the more impactful moments for me was after the glass fire, touring some of the areas where fire had come through and seeing that the fire had been on the fence, but had not actually touched any of the houses. It literally burned the fence down, but not the houses that were around it because of some of that work that had been done in that community.

And and it was a really striking visual on how you can help firefighters better respond in the disaster by doing the preparatory work upfront.

Yeah. And, you know, the fences was an interesting thing to watch. We've heard from a lot of residents that they felt like during the rebuilding process that the wooden fences should be banned by the city of Santa Rosa. We really dug in literally to looking at how some of those fences spread because ultimately, we're trying to figure out what we can do to to mitigate that risk. You know, we've talked about the Zone 0.

Hopefully, we'll touch on a little bit, but the vegetation management ordinance that we've established and what that's doing. But when you look at the fences, the fences weren't necessarily burning because of the wall of fire that was crossing over Highway 12 from the glass fire. It was the ember cast and it was the eddying that was that it was that was being established.

And we could actually tell scientifically that the fences were actually burning from the opposite side of the the direction of travel of the fire. That it was a lot of the leaf litter, a lot of the yard clutter.

There was an effort, and rightfully so, to focus on a lot of that leaf litter and a lot of that clutter around homes, but they neglected the yard well away from the home. And we could actually see that a lot of the leaf litter, a lot of the dead and dying vegetation up against the the fence was what actually caught not the wall of flame, not the fire from the fence itself.

So we've been working to get our community also to treat their fences if they still have them established like a structure, maintaining that that defensible space that quote unquote zone zero or or at least a couple feet off the fence line to to mitigate that risk.

Yeah. I'll let you dig in on the vegetation management in a second, but also Assemblymember Connolly and I both have bills this year working on prescribed burns, making it easier to do that preventative, that can assist our local fire departments and and local folks with doing that work. So if you wanna talk about vegetation management and talk a little bit about that that upfront work, that'd be helpful.

Yeah. So the burning was a little bit of a challenge for Santa Rosa. We had never burned in the city limits. We'd never allowed open burning. We had never done prescribed fire because it just didn't really seem practical or possible in the city.

We have, since then, through it, one of our ordinances established an ability to burn in the city limits for pile burning purposes. However, we had to come up with some rules so that people aren't just burning on the quarter acre property in the wildland interface. So it was really for properties, five acres and larger, to encourage a lot of those larger undeveloped open space lands that are typically private owned or through Homeowners Association and ability to mitigate their risks.

From a prescribed fire standpoint, we attempted to do our first burn, in a state piece of property on Old Rabbit Highway, Caltrans property. It is very challenging to burn in a city like Santa Rosa, although it is highly needed, obviously, to deal with a lot of the effects of the 2017 and 2020 fires, but also to mitigate future risks.

We have very close friends up in Northern Sonoma County that can burn off hundreds of acres Sonoma and people wouldn't blink an eye. When we burn in the city of Santa Rosa, we pull our permit through air quality, but we also have to initiate a pretty substantial, communications plan. In fact, we had to actually coordinate with hotels, making sure that their guests knew not to call 911 when the fire is burning across the freeway.

We had to have the cancer center and other skilled nursing facilities in Fountain Grove shut off their HVAC systems. We had to do a tremendous amount of of outreach to then have air quality call off the fire firing because of an air quality day.

That was obviously frustrating for us, challenging for us. We tried having some conversations with them that, you know, even though we could technically burn this and be exempt from the regulations if we would permit that burn as a training burn, we would never burn under conditions that are not safe or that where the smoke is impacting residents. So we always wait till the the conditions are right.

So that's been one of the things that we've been hoping that there's we come up with some sort of flexibility or some sort of measures where the jurisdiction has the ability to proceed as long as they're doing it under safe conditions, that the the impacts of smoke is being evaluated. And if any point in time that there are impacts or that the conditions are right, the burning would be suspended just like it would be during a training a training burn.

Did you want me to talk about the vegetation management ordinance real quick?

Yeah. And I'll say really fast. One of the data points that we heard is that over 50% of all of the prescribed burns that are planned don't actually get executed because you have unsafe conditions, you have changing conditions, which is obviously frustrating for folks. But yeah. And then do you wanna talk about the the ordinance?

So yes. Again, anything that can streamline them, you'd obviously have Santa Rosa support. It is very challenging for for communities and to to be potentially one of those communities that puts that much effort into providing the outreach and minimizing the impacts of 911 system in a densely populated area like that to then not have it pulled off like we've had before, is is challenging.

I've often joked that I feel like the only way we'd be able to successfully do it, is literally have a sky writer on standby and have them, you know, flying around the sky like they do in Southern California saying control burn, do not call 911.

Short of that, we are really confined to our ability to

That's not the worst idea.

It's well, you heard it here. So if you can figure out how to make that happen, that that would be fantastic. It's, you know, even the prescribed fire that just took place at Pepperwood, you know, as soon as I got a text message from somebody that should know that that's a prescribed fire and we're seeing the column of smoke from the valley floor and looking up over Fountain Grove towards Pepperwood, I immediately called our Santa Rosa police dispatch and Redcom and said, hey.

What's your call volume like? Redcom basically said that we are getting call 911 calls from all over the place.

So, you know, there can be the signs on the freeway, the text messaging, the the social media posts, the Nixle, the Civic Ready, but it it it's not necessarily gonna capture everybody that might be in the area and seeing it and panicking and calling 911.

Yeah. Just just a little side comment, then I'll turn it back over to to my colleague. But that is one of the discussions that we've been having is how do you get the community better prepared for the fact that California for millennia had smoke? That that was a part of the the landscape.

And I've I've seen some interesting studies pop up even around things, around dead and dying trees, where some of the the beetles or some of the diseases that they're getting may also be able to to have some better effects on preventing that if you had more smoke that was in the area, because that's what was needed to it.

So really interested to see where the research goes, really interested to see how we can reintroduce that kind of as a California concept to allow for this management. Because I am particularly concerned, even as we put more money into vegetation management and preventative work that you have to keep up with that preventative work once you've done it. And so it's ever expanding.

Yeah. And that's one of our challenges right now. When you look at the way the ecology has changed in Fountain Grove, for example. Fountain Grove used to be an oak grass woodland, and when we killed off the canopy, it really changed drastically the ecology in our community. And I would argue that there's portions of Fountain Grove that are probably more hazardous today than they were in 2017.

Yes. The homes are rebuilt to current standards and will probably when and theoretically, as with evacuation warnings and people closing up doors and windows, the survivability of the homes should be clearly way better today than it was in 2017 with the new construction requirements. But the vegetation is is is is really challenging.

You know, we have projects that are both through on the board right now through HMGP, through our local measure h, where our measure h funded our local funded fuel crew has been doing work in Fountain Grove. But we realized that when either that work takes place or a resident's work takes place to your point.

Something has to be done to maintain it. And that's where we've established our own local ordinance here, our vegetation management ordinance that did a couple things. Expanding off the Zone zero real quickly, we actually, have now banned certain types of mulch within 30 feet of a home. One of them is a gorilla hair mulch. We gave residents a year to come into compliance with that, but we no longer allow gorilla hair mulch within 30 feet of a structure in our wildland urban interface.

We watched the challenges associated with it in the glass fire and and watched how many resources we had to tie up to fully extinguish and deal with how tricky and and difficult to extinguish the gorilla hair mulches, and how receptive it is to to ember cast. We also saw certain types of dyed Mulch or dyed wood chips. Were very susceptible to ember cast and burned very well and led to a lot of property damage. So that's also been restricted.

The two bigger things that we've done is clearly, there's a lot of dead and dying trees that once they're out, they don't become an issue anymore, but we're never gonna deal with every single one of them in the tubs and nuns glass fire footprints.

But we have now put measures in place through ordinance to require the removal of them within 30 feet of a right away or within a 100 feet of a defensible space zone. We've always had a weed abatement ordinance. The weed abatement ordinance required people to either completely remove the weeds on their property or if they were over five five acres in size, they had to cut a 30 foot break around the perimeter.

When we watch the ecology shift in Fountain Grove, what was once seasonal grasses has been overgrown now with I call it Bay Bush, where it's a lot of the bay trees that died off have become very bushy as they've tried to regrow, and then Scotch broom. So we have required that those no longer be, in, 30 feet of a roadway or within 100 feet of a defensible space zone.

Again, to not only deal with grant funding projects, but to force people also to maintain that that level of work to ultimately make our community as safe as we can given the changes that we're seeing in our ecology locally.

We're gonna move to Brad Sherwood. And, Brad, in addition to being a leader with Sonoma Water, you're the Co-Founder of the Marquess Area Community Fund and really kinda getting down to the community level now. First question, how important was community organization in the recovery after the Tubbs Fire?

Thank you very much. Again, an honor to be here today and represent the many, many block captains who found themselves as community leaders after the Tubbs Fire, and there's actually a couple here in the room. And I'll tell you what, being a block captain is—it's more than just a, a badge of honor, I would say, but it's a true kinship and a friendship that develops. And when I ran into Barry Hirsch at the doorway, first thing you do is you hug.

And, man, that's community right there. And you can't rebuild after disaster without love and compassion and the ability to just be people and help each other out. So, first and foremost, that's what it does. It brings people to the table to help rebuild together. And the key word there is "together."

Because as we all know, after a disaster, there's a lot of chaos, and there's a lot of questions, and there's a lot of fraud. There's a lot of unanswered questions, wrong answers. The Block Captain Program was developed to help the community get questions answered, develop needs assessments for their neighborhoods, and to work with our elected officials both at the local, state, and federal levels. It really works.

It works so well that, along with some others on the panel, I've worked with an organization called After the Fire USA and have traveled to seven other communities that have been ravaged by wildfires to help set up block captain programs, much like we did here in Santa Rosa.

But first and foremost, the Block Captain Program, the community involvement, really it's based on several key factors here, and the first being mutual support and information sharing. Having those key block captain meetings at the local level, which were really driven by for unincorporated block captain county supervisors was key. We would meet every week. It was every Wednesday at 7:30.

And of course, shout out to our friend, Supervisor James Gore. I know he was very involved in that.

Supervisor James Gore, as we call him, there's block captains, and he was like the block chief. I mean, he was, he really absolutely, and I think Paul will I say James Gore's name a lot when I travel around because he really did help develop that system as did his staff. But it wasn't just Supervisor Gore. It was our state local elected representatives and their staff who attended every week. It was congressional leaders and their staff that attended.

It was also regional resource agency representatives who attended our block captain meetings. All to say, and I'll get in this later, but this system really needs to be formalized. And it needs to be more than just a cope or a Firewise USA.

We shouldn't have to have volunteers like myself take vacation time out of our schedule to go travel and get these block captain systems up and running because quite frankly, some communities just don't know what it means, what it is, or how to organize their local communities. It's a system that should be in place now.

Block captain programs and systems should be in place now, whether it's through the COPE system, whether it's through neighborhood watch groups, but having that ability to educate, increase, and aware community members on how to work with their county officials, their local agency officials, that's what really makes the rebuild effort move forward faster and get people home. Because at the end of the day, that's what you want. You wanna get people home as fast as you can and get businesses up and running.

So, make the case now then. In addition to wildfire response and recovery, what role do block captains play in wildfire prevention?

So, I, I think you've got folks in this awful club, this wildfire survivor club. Right? Don't wanna be a member of it, but we're members. So, utilizing that membership, we've all been through it. We've rebuilt our homes.

We've rebuilt our communities. We have our individual opinions on Zone 0 or other efforts that are underway. But at the end of the day, continuing that block captain program to continue the communications and information sharing is critical. That's why we created the Marquess Area Community Fund, our 501C3 nonprofit in the Marquess Area to ensure that we continue that dialogue and that discussion with officials as fire prevention mitigation efforts continue to be implemented.

It also gives us the ability to leverage funding locally to continue rebuilding our communities.

We're not done rebuilding, folks. It's been nine years since the Tubbs Fire. We still have a dozen neighbor lots in our neighborhood that haven't been built. We still have empty lots in the commercial sector of Larkfield that still have not been built. And we're developing our very first community park in Downtown Larkfield.

If you can call Downtown Larkfield in downtown—I do. But those efforts are still ongoing. So, leveraging the Block Captain Program, you've still got folks like Barry and I who show up to stuff like this because you're engaged. So, let's utilize that energy and that amazing custom unique knowledge to help us all out statewide and federally.

So, Chris and I both serve on the State Budget Subcommittee that actually addresses wildfire and resources. And I'll tell you the question that always comes up, whether we're talking with CAL FIRE folks or regional folks, but it's gonna be critical to hear really from the, the local folks on this, and that is what are the most important actions people can take to ensure their communities are mitigating fire risk? And later on, we'll get into how the state can be a good partner for that.

But from that community standpoint, what are you seeing?

So, speaking from the, the Larkfield area as an example, you know, working with officials from the Sonoma County Fire District and their fire prevention team is essential, especially as planning and funding for budgets are put together. I'm sure, you know, same with Paul, I know Paul does a ton of outreach with, you know, City of Santa Rosa residents to develop those mitigation and fire prevention efforts and programs. One of the biggest things, though, that is, is concerning is great, we have all these plans, the county does, and we have these wonderful staff folks I work with as a county employee all the time, but where's the sustainable long term funding?

That's the biggest question I think we have as a community because you know, we had to develop a 501C3 to get funding for some local fire prevention efforts from other agencies and private non corporations just to get some things done. Now that the Sonoma County Fire District has been consolidated and Cindy Foreman is absolutely amazing to work with, you know, we're seeing the investments in our fire systems and equipment and staffing.

But statewide, you know, where's that cap and trade money going?

And where's that revenue long term? How's that gonna trickle down into local mitigation and prevention, you know, plans? You know, are we gonna be, you know, supporting additional revenue streams? Because Prop 4 has about 1.5 in it, right, for a fire chapter. That's short term though.

That's not long-term funding. What's gonna happen after Prop 4? So, I think those are questions that the community are asking, is how can we get funding to help sustain those hazard mitigation plans and efforts locally? And let's, hey, let's, let's fund some block captain programs.

I'll tell you right now, when we travel down to LA, to help get their block captain programs up and running in Altadena and, and Palisades, one thing that they've got that we didn't have at the time was a tremendous amount of corporate funding. They actually have full-time staff now working these block captain programs privately funded. Right? Department of Angels has—there's an Altadena collaborative, full-time staff.

And their full-time job is to support local elected officials and their staff to get the information they need and develop the block captain program.

That's tremendous. We didn't have that. Right? Barry and I were sitting around at Cafe Mocha as volunteers while we're rebuilding our house, also getting our block captain programs up and running. And that is the same as every other community that I've seen.

I haven't been to, to Maui, but you're looking at a lot of volunteers, people who are being impacted by the disaster, who are going through their own recovery emotional issues, but also stepping up as community leaders. So, that's my pitch. Let's get a block captain funding program going to help community leaders not only pay for their valuable time, but also some key essentials in communication outreach, such as basic websites, basic communication tools.

I know myself, I use my, some of my insurance dollars to pay for my Block Captain Program, to pay for my neighborhood website, to pay for that email, to pay for posters, pay for, you know, things that I shouldn't have had to pay for, but they needed to get done. So, luckily, some corporations, some communities have that funding support.

But, why not make that part of a, you know, a foundational funding chapter in the future, future proposition that could support communities across the state?

Yeah. Yeah. The audience agrees with that. That seems like a really proven effective idea. Any other recommendations from your standpoint for the State Legislature to improve our fire mitigation and prevention capabilities?

Again, I'm taking it from a block captain perspective.

Would absolutely love to see some type of a, a staff training program for the legislative staff on what a block captain is. Well, how do you, how to get a network up and running? A playbook that which after the fire USA has, but, you know, like in LA, I, I know, you know, Paul and I recalled many times to, you know, speak with legislative staff down there on, okay, how do we organize our community? And so, let's get out ahead of it this time.

You know, let's get some some training programs, to really formalize that process so not just your teams are prepared, but county supervisors and city council staff. I'll just say, it's amazing when I meet with, you know, folks in LA and that there's still a major disconnect between the Mayor's office and the council members' office working in the Palisades. There's major communications issues when it comes down to utilities and Pasadena water and power.

There's four different mutual water districts in Altadena, and no one's really helping connect the dots, other than the block captains working on the ground doing the job that I think, and I can say this as a—now I'll turn on my Sonoma Water hat. We benefited greatly from the block captains.

Our utility staff were able to meet with neighborhood groups to talk about their needs assessment lists to help them get back in their homes because guess what? You're not getting back in your home or your business without water and sewer and power. Right? There's some other things as well. But of course, developing that relationship and bake making utility improvements efficient and cost effective for those who don't even know if they can afford to rebuild their house, major priority.

Case on point, just case on point, community in Larkfield, all on septic tanks. We were given a vision and a goal by Supervisor Gore to, you know, rebuild this community better. Now is the time to do it. So, after listening to block captains in Larkfield who are all in septic tanks, they wanted to connect to sewer. There was a sewer line literally running right in front of the neighborhood.

How do we take advantage of this horrible opportunity? Luckily, Sonoma Water had $6,000,000 sitting in a money market account because we had just sold a building of ours. I mean, timing was unfortunately good, but it was that the decision of the Board of Supervisors to take that $6,000,000 and invest it in the sanitation program to connect these folks to sewer. Right?

You know how many communities I've met in Altadena that have the same situation going on, but no agency down there has $6,000,000 laying around to do that?

That's an issue. There's gotta be a financial solution statewide to help those communities build back better on the utility side of the house. We felt very fortunate. It was lucky we were able to pull that money out of our general fund because it was there. But communities in Altadena, I've met with several block captains over there.

They would love to do septic to sewer, but there's no funding solution available. It's awful. So, that's kind of a miss.

Chris.

Yeah. Just to editorialize for a minute. So, when the Palisades and Altadena Fire happened, you had a new state Senator for the area who'd been in office for a month. You had two new assembly members who had been in the area—had been in office for a month—and really were scrambling for how can they help represent the community that they're literally finding their feet while going through this incredible disaster. I think they've done a really good job talking with them.

But I told them number one thing was get your block captains in order. Let neighbors help neighbors build that hope that you can rebuild the community. And I told them all that you'd be very shocked how quickly neighbors become general contractors, become insurance agents. Right? That everybody has to learn these skills that they never thought that they were going to have to have to be able to rebuild not just their own home, but their entire community that they had.

And Jeff Okrepkie and other folks were really diligent about meeting with some of those members to be able to help try to structure that. So, I'm glad to hear that they're still keeping that structure and, and utilizing it.

They are. And hats off to all all those communities and representatives down there. We've met with them several times and their staff are doing an incredible job. It was just that initial, you know, what is a block captain and how, as a staffer, how do I use utilize this network, you know, having it be a new thing. Right?

And, and, and being a staffer, I can understand that and appreciate that. So, that's why I think pulling in folks like After the Fire USA to utilize those resources and the volunteer network is absolutely crucial and critical. And hopefully, any and all elected officials should know that resources out there, so they can just fast dial that number.

Yeah. And I was always struck at how many people had their home rebuilt and were still showing up to the block meetings to still assist their neighbors as well. As you said, an unfortunate club that people are a part of, but they take care of one another. I think that that's the secret sauce for Sonoma County on why Sonoma County's rebuild went relatively smooth compared to some of these other jurisdictions.

Well, and I wanna point out with Scott Orr here too that the Sonoma County Resiliency Center, and I know the same with the City of Santa Rosa, their coordination with the block captains and helping get any the ordinances, the regulations, the permitting, they worked so well with the block captains. And I will hands down say that our rebuild, we never had an issue with city or county permitting, planning issues. None. Can't say the same for insurance.

But I'll just say that that is such an important part of the Block Captain Program is working with loads of locals officials.

Yes. We have one more question for you. And you touched on it very briefly, and that is unscrupulous actors, fraud, people taking advantage of the community at their worst moment. As you work with other communities and talk with other communities, do you still see any loopholes that we should be reviewing to try to protect folks who are rebuilding their homes?

You're talking about the insurance companies, I take

it? Yep.

Because that is the number one concern. One of the first things we do as block captains when we go into a community is say, do not settle. Do not let your insurance company screw you. What do you mean they're here to protect us? I can't tell you how much we have to repeat that.

Even with all the media, even after everything we went through, it's just it's like, you know, folks are busy. They forget. And they expect that their insurance provider is gonna, you know, do the best for them with that 65%. That's great. So there's huge I know Amy's here, huge insurance education.

So when I hear fraud and scammer, that initially comes to my mind because that's the first challenge that people get when they're when they're trying to rebuild. Otherwise, when you talk about builders and developers coming in, I mean, poor Altadena. I mean, right up their Main Business Street, within a week of the fire, there were billboards going up. It was awful. One of the key facts programs that we did as a block captain is we developed a group rebuild program.

So we put on workshops. We vetted builders. We vetted contractors. And we welcome them to approved workshops that block captains put on to ensure that our fellow wildfire survivors had you know, approved, vetted consultants to pick and choose from. Another key factor in the block captain program was these group rebuilds.

We've had several, again, vetted, developers come in such as Stonefield out of LA San Diego came in and they built close to 200 homes in the Larkfield area. And they were able to do so with funding agreements that were, you know, strong. They didn't mess up anyone budget wise. They built great homes and they kept on budget on target.

Those bringing in those kind of group rebuilds where people can save money and get back in their homes really did make a difference in getting our community rebuilt.

And that was something the block captain program did help support. So but, huge issue that continues. It's shocking that it still continues with the fraud and the scammers out there.

Yep. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Hey. We're gonna move to, Jennifer Burke. Jennifer, I'm gonna combine a couple questions. How has the role of Santa Rosa Water in wildfire prevention changed since the Tubbs Fire? And is Santa Rosa's water infrastructure better prepared for wildfires now than in 2017?

Thank you. I wanna thank Assemblymember Connolly and Assemblymember Rogers for asking me to be here today. Santa Rosa, we're a water retailer. We serve the city of Santa Rosa. We are the largest customer of Sonoma Water, sitting to my right here.

And we rely on Sonoma Water for about 93% of our water supply. And so our role is really to be a partner to aid in assuring that we are prepared and communicating and collaborating, not only with our fellow water agencies in the region, so looking at regional opportunities.

Recently, we have been involved in a resiliency study, looking at our systems together, collaboratively, with Sonoma Water and the eight other entities that they serve, to really see how can we more effectively and efficiently operate those systems together, instead of staying in our individual silos. We work very closely with our fire, our fire department, and I think that is probably one of the most key things to recognize. As a water purveyor, we're here to help support and be there and communicate with our fire department.

We have, similar to what was said earlier, we had always focused also on seismic preparedness prior to the fires. And since then, it really is looking at weather conditions, warnings, making sure that our tanks have greater amounts of water in place when those warnings come out, collaborating with the fire department to make sure that if a fire does occur, where is it, where are we, do we need operators that need to come out, making sure our staff is safe and can get to those areas.

We have also done a lot more training with our staff, a lot more drills. We have done some infrastructure improvements in particular. We learned unfortunately a hard lesson about backup power and the inability to run generators after a fire, especially if they're on propane, because natural gas is cut off by PG and E, you need something to power our generators.

They were on propane. Propane tanks won't go into an active fire area, so we had to quickly mobilize and put diesel tanks in place so we could switch our generators over and fuel them. We have now since gone through through a hazard mitigation grant program to redesign all of those and replace all those generators so now we have the ability, should a fire come through, we can be up on our generators very quickly.

So I think the mutual aid, the regional coordination, the hardening of our systems and investment in the infrastructure and really looking at the resiliency and how we can work together, we also set up an emergency training and coordination subcommittee with Sonoma Water and all of the water contractors that meets continuously throughout the year, so that we can really look at different scenarios and how best we can work together to be that supportive role and have our systems be as prepared as they can, balancing water quality and balancing the needs of what our systems can provide.

Thanks. So one risk that is always top of mind is around wildfire related contamination of the water supply. What actions should cities take to prevent contamination?

So one of the things we learned throughout this is that when you have any type of loss of pressure, there are contaminants that can get into your system. And I don't think that was ever thought before when you had a wildfire come through. We were, unfortunately, the first entity that really had to deal with this.

And so since then, we have actually done a lot of work with Water Research Foundation, with the team from Purdue, we are part of a recent publication, Wildfire Concept of Operations Plan for Water Distribution System Testing and Recovery.

And one of the most important things is to really recognize that one, you need to coordinate with your local fire, get into the area as soon as possible, make sure you can reestablish pressure if you lose pressure, flush your systems as quickly as possible to get any possible contamination out of those systems, and then start testing.

And so it really is a coordinated effort, but our experience in 2017 in the Tubbs Fire and a year long recovery from a contamination issue versus the twenty twenty Glass Fire, when we still had some homes, unfortunately, that we lost, and we went out quickly, implemented this checklist, and we had no contamination issues whatsoever. So I think key is just recognizing flushing and getting out there, reestablishing pressure, flushing, testing, to get your system back up and running as quickly as possible.

Great. And then a question for you as well. What recommendations do you have for the state legislature to improve our fire mitigation and response capabilities?

I think, you know, one is continuing to provide funding and especially funding not only for improving our infrastructure, but funding that also would allow us for resiliency. So anything like HMGP programs where we can look at

And what is

Oh, sorry, that hazard mitigation grant programs where we can look at how we can prepare for resiliency, where we can look at how we can, you know, have generators in place, replace them, look at different ways that our infrastructure can communicate with each other in terms of technology.

So not just limiting to big infrastructure projects and how you can build and build resiliency that way, but also looking at how we can really be prepared with things that would be smaller but not always available funding wise for agencies to do. I think also it's important to encourage and keep looking at the regional level for how we can work together and not necessarily look at sort of a more broad one size fits all.

I think all the regions and the water utilities are a little bit different and how we can all coordinate and work together at the regional level is extremely important. So anything that continues to support those type of planning efforts, I think would be really important from the state legislature, and then also just, I think it's important to recognize that the water systems, we are here and we are a supportive player, but a wildfire is not something that a water system can fight.

And so really just remembering and educating on what a water system really is and isn't, I think that messaging is crucial to continue to be supported at the state level.

Assemblymember. Yeah. I I I don't have

any tough questions for Jennifer. I just, wanted to toot her horn of what an incredible job she's done and Santa Rosa Water does, and she she kinda glossed over it. But if I remember correctly, when we first had the contaminants in in Fountain Grove, we were looking at about a $40,000,000 replacement of the entire water system up there, and FEMA was denying even that the contaminants were as a result of the fire.

And Jennifer and her team not only went out and proved it, but if I remember correctly, did a white paper that now other communities have been able to utilize to be able to get approval for FEMA funds related to those disasters. So just another example of of how we've taken this horrible experience and turned it into being useful for other folks and helping other folks when they experience, unfortunately, a disaster.

And then quick plug, I also chair the Select Committee on Climate Innovation, which Damon is a member of as well. In our last meeting that we had, we actually highlighted a project over in Calistoga, green hydrogen backup program. We use diesel generators here. They've been able to completely decarbonize while being most more resilient, and it's a pretty cool system that they put in. So if if folks are interested, that was in our last climate innovation subcommittee, where you can look up the information.

And I just would say thank you for that comment, and I do wanna recognize that our state partners and our federal partners, especially at Division of Drinking Water and EPA, we couldn't have been successful without them, and you are correct, FEMA was absolutely denying that it was an issue from the wildfire. We never had contamination before, we had it after, we were able to prove it, but we couldn't have done it without the leadership of the council and our local and state partners that helped us.

Solve that for much less than $40,000,000

Yeah, last comment and I'll turn it back to to my colleague, but I think kind of across all three of the the presentations, one of the themes that came out of the Tubbs Fire was that FEMA was equipped for different types of disasters, whether they were hurricanes or tornadoes or things that were more visible than some of the damage, especially that was done under the ground here in Santa Rosa.

And I think the response from each of your agencies helped turn and pivot the perspective of FEMA to looking at wildfire in a very different way that has been beneficial to our communities to to have that perspective since then.

Thank you, panel. We're gonna next move, to our, next panel. I'm gonna ask Paul to stay put. We'll invite Scott Orr and Amy Bach to the dais or the panel. And this next discussion is gonna focus on physical rebuilding after the Tubbs fire and how Santa Rosa and residents and neighborhoods like Coffee Park are better prepared for wildfires now than they were in 2017.

We'll also discuss vulnerabilities that still remain with old housing stock and how insurance coverage, something we're all familiar with, plays a part in wildfire prevention. So Scott and Amy, if you could please introduce yourselves with a few minutes of opening remarks.

It's just such a pleasure to be here. I am the cofounder and executive director of a national nonprofit organization called United Policyholders. This is our thirty fifth year of service as a five zero one c three with a focus on problem solving in the insurance space. And we run three programs, the roadmap to preparedness, roadmap to recovery and advocacy and action. And we were very involved in this community's response to the Atlas and Tubbs fire, later Kinkade as well as Glass.

Early on, we had a presence at the assistance center. We had a table in the press, Old Press Democrat Building. And from the get go we were very engaged with both city and county officials to bring, as you heard Brad talking about, bring the experiences that other wildfire impacted communities have had.

In fact, I think my first meeting with the city of Santa Rosa was with the city manager at the time where somebody came up with me from Oakland to talk about lessons learned after their fires and how this community could benefit from those. And then just briefly, I know you've got lots of questions to ask.

We currently remain very engaged in this community and also Marin and Napa because these tragic fires have given us the opportunity to raise a lot of awareness among the local populations about the importance of wildfire risk reduction. And because insurance issues remain very challenging, both in the aftermath of disasters, but also now we have a whole different manifestation of insurance problems with affordability and availability.

This community is exemplary in its in its innovation, in the work that that Paul does, and that a lot of other people in this community now do, to try to bring good strategies to both to other wildfire impacted communities, but also to keep awareness high in this area because people put things the last time we had an earthquake was a major one, ninety people tend to forget sad bad things. So keeping that awareness in people's minds is really critical. So I'm happy to be here. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. So I'm Scott Orr, the Director for Permit Sonoma, which is the County Sonoma's, you know, permitting and land use agency. I've been in my role for just over six months now, but I've been with the county since 2016. I was in the emergency operations center in 2017 for the Tubbs and Nunn fires as well as later the Kinkade in 2019 and Walbridge and Glass and Myers fire.

So this is very close to me. It's really what solidified what public service was for me waking up in 2017, dropping my cat off at a neighbor's house and going to the emergency operation center. On the other side of the fires, I was responsible for the permitting of a number of the rebuilds in the Marquess area, including a apartment complex that burned down. And it's again just something that's very close to me and I really do appreciate the ability to be here.

It has also really affected how I look at the role of a government agency as part of of permitting efforts and the need for flexibility and helping people get back on their feet.

So I'll leave my comments short and look forward to the questions.

Appreciate it. Why don't we dive right in with you? In the aftermath of the Tubbs fire, how did it permit Sonoma balance the need to rebuild quickly with rebuilding safely and more resilient?

So from a starting point, we knew that anything that would get rebuilt back would be, you know, more resilient, safer. So the goal was how can we move quick enough so that people who live here get to keep living here rather than moving on?

So it took a lot of, you know, kind of pulling together of various, you know, disciplines within our building to make it easier for people to, you know, have that one stop shop, not having to go to a bunch of different places, you know, trying to get, you know, different, you know, handle on all the different permit types that they need.

You know, some people just needed, you know, a building permit for a single family dwelling, but some people needed, you know, a building permit for a single family dwelling. They might have needed a grading permit for a new access point.

They might have needed a, you know, as silly as it sounds, design review because of our in place requirements, you know, where we put more of a focus on what things looked like rather than how safe they were. We had areas that were in geologic hazard zones that had additional, you know, soil test requirements.

And so we really looked at, you know, how can we remove barriers to make rebuilding go as quickly as possible because, you know, we had looked at the research and we knew that, you know, on a national scale, you'd be lucky if you got 50% of the residents and lots rebuilt. And, you know, I think that the fact that we're over 75% rebuild from 2017 shows that what we did was effective.

We also really had to look at what was the intent behind a lot of the regulations that we had.

You know, for example, I mentioned the, apartment complex had burned down. We knew that they wanted to rebuild with affordable units that they didn't have before. But if we looked at the letter of our code, that would have meant they could not rebuild. So we had to rethink, you know, how do we apply, you know, kind of the the affordability requirements for people who are trying to, you know, get back on their feet, do the right thing, provide homes for families.

That isn't technically allowed, you know, if you look at the letter of the code.

How it's permit Sonoma's role evolved since the Tubbs fire? How does it currently help residents make their homes more resilient? And perhaps talk particularly about older homes. Right? How how are they, being brought up to to speed in this?

So the starting point is education. You know, it's there's so many, complex regulations in a million different places. It's really about letting homeowners know exactly, you know, what they can do to make their home safer. Knowing that each thing that's gonna make their home safer also cost money.

And so, one of the things that we've, stood up since 2017 is our, you know, chipper program, which the county puts $900,000 of transient occupancy tax money towards chipping services for the unincorporated county, where, you know, we will come out, we will do chipping to help encourage that stewardship of and maintenance of of land.

But, you know, being someone that isn't just focused on the fire piece, you know, we have a a broad swath of, you know, kind of touch points along the entitlement path. We also try to start the conversation before properties even developed. You know, we have a lot of area in the county that hasn't burned yet that are large parcel sizes that people want to subdivide.

And so it's having those early discussions about, you know, the true cost of, you know, meeting current fire safe standards, you know, kind of out in the hinterlands. And so that people don't get started and then, you know, find themselves suddenly living in a very high fire hazard severity with zone with a bunch of other issues.

So, you know, kind of all along the process from vacant land to existing homes and and and education, you know, it's really touched everything.

So you talked about education and outreach. And I think one common theme we hear in Sacramento, and we've heard it here this morning as well, is around, really accelerating home hardening. Right? Defensible space measures. Based on your interaction with homeowners, how important is outreach and education to facilitate that? How does that how is that looking in the community right now?

Yeah. Well, we're in unfortunately a real shift in how it's looking for us, you know, because with the cancellation of, you know, our $40,000,000 plus, you know, building resilient infrastructure and communities grant within the last year, that's really taken a lot of the wind out of our sales for doing that because we spent the first couple years of implementation working with people, educating them, letting them know that if they let us come do assessments of their property that there are going to be resources that are gonna follow to help fund that home hardening.

Because, you know, we're not just looking, you know, wild lands in, but we're looking home out. And so with the now unfortunate realization that that money is no longer coming, it just raises the importance of that education, particularly as we see the additional rules, you know, coming into place whether it's zone zero or or defensible space, things like that.

So it's highlighting the importance of of the need, but, you know, being open about, you know, we don't have a solution for that financial gap at this time. Got to keep working on that.

Better and what does that mean better and what does that mean. You did see some options, like Sonoma Clean Power works very closely with folks to have a net zero option for rebuilding their home, which largely people didn't take advantage of. And that seems like that has been consistent in other jurisdictions as well. What's your sense on why that is? Because there is that conversation piece that every single person has about how do we come back better from this.

And yet, to your point, like you rebuilt the latest standards, and that is better from a safety perspective, from an environmental perspective than typically what these homes were built at, but also not as much as it could have been with a little bit of investment or a little bit of extra attention.

Yeah. I think when it comes down to it, you know, big picture, we can all agree on those are great things. But when it's you one person, you know, wanting to get back into, you know, your property, your residence as soon as possible, you know, those things can be seen as like bells and whistles. It's like bonus.

And so, you know, I I think that that's maybe a space that, you know, local governments or the the state can look at, you know, like kind of, what's the value add? Like, okay. Yes. You wanna, you know, get back in as fast as possible. But if you do it in this way, you know, maybe there's other ways that we can make it, better, or faster, or just lower that that financial incentive to not do it.

Just if you could talk a little really fast, the tension between also from permit Sonoma's perspective, and I know that the city had it as well. You wanna waive all of the fees to make it cheaper for people to get back in their home, but then that has a substantial impact also on what the rest of the community looks like. Can you talk about how you tried to address that tension?

Yeah. So we have offered reduced permitting fees for rebuilds since 2017. I think they're just expiring this year given the progress that's been made. But yeah, it's a challenge in terms of government services are funded by fees. So if we're taking in less fees and where is that coming from.

But I really saw it as a long term investment like, yes, we're taking a short term hit. But you think about a house being back, I mean that's that's someone that's gonna be there forever, you know, shopping in the community, improving their property value. So it to me, it's more of a long term investment of taking that short term hit for making sure there is actually a community to support in the future.

Great. Why don't we move to Amy? And thank you for all your work, Amy. Question is how did United holders help neighborhoods like Coffey Park rebuild more resiliently? And then maybe more broadly speaking, what role does insurance play in rebuilding more modern fire resilient homes? Feel free to get into the good, bad, and ugly.

Well, first, I wanna say right back at you, thank you. Thank you to both of you because, the work that the legislature has been doing in recent years with AB 1888, the you know, we haven't quite figured out, I think, how to fund those grants that the Department of Insurance is now authorized to issue. And the brick hit is a big one. It's a big deal. But nevertheless, I think the legislature is on it very, very intently, and I appreciate that.

So our organization helped neighborhoods like Coffee Park by bringing our road map recovery program here right out of the gate, and by integrating with the efforts that were going on here locally.

So, you know, I remember hanging out in the trailer with, you know, the permitting consultant to try to, really help, as you heard Brad talking about the importance of having neighborhoods be organized so that communication is streamlined about, all right, what are the permit, what are the code upgrades that a homeowner might have to make? And I wanna commend the county, I think, came out very early with a with a guide. Right?

I remember it being in the disaster center, there being a handout about what are the local building codes that people need to know about and incorporate in their rebuild plans.

And I that remains to me, like, one of the many examples of how many things this community did right. Right? You gave people that information out of the gate, that was very pivotal, both in terms of them kind of figuring out, what they wanted to do, how they wanted to replace their home. We are very focused on helping them Max their insurance funds so that they have the most available to fund their rebuild.

But understanding what the local codes were going to be is part of helping people structure their plans so that whatever they wanted to rebuild was going to meet, get approved and get them a permit.

So I actually have on my staff now somebody who was a block captain in Coffee Park. We hired her, Annie Barber. She's well known. She's wonderful. She's full time with us, and she is one of our two liaisons to the LA communities that were affected by the fires.

And so we met with block captains at that time many times. I didn't get to do the wine Wednesdays as much as I would have liked to. But that whole thing and also you heard Brad mentioned Stonefield. Well, Stonefield, so this whole concept of a group rebuild is got great economies and efficiencies. You get bulk buying of materials.

You get streamlined, like you just give people not infinite choices, but a limited number of choices of plans. And so we knew Stonefield from San Diego because we had brought our program there in 2003 and 2007 after the Cedar Fire and the Witch Creek Fires. So we knew those that outfit, and we thought they were they were actually like, one of the members of my team had them build one of her houses, so I actually had seen it, and and I thought, okay.

Because it is true. I remember there being so many people coming in here from, well, I was in Calgary, and we did this, and we did that, and promising things that they didn't deliver.

So this idea that you bring information about trusted resources and strategies for recovering from a wildfire from one community to another is very valuable. It's been part of our approach for our whole time since 1991. So we just helped people get reliable, trustworthy information, make good decisions, avoid problems, and we coordinated with the local agencies. So for example, on debris removal, when we did we do a series, we did a series of of, public events, right, for years after the fire.

We were we were posted up at the Unitarian Universalist Church, in Downtown Santa Rosa.

We would have these, these workshops, and I almost always had somebody, Gabe, Augburn, or we had, I'm blanking on her name right now, but the gal who had the enviable task of coordinating the debris removal program, or at least giving residents information, Help me out here.

Are you talking about Trish Presente or

No. Environmental health. No. In hospital. No.

No. Whoever she was, we would have her there explaining to people what the rules were for participating in the coordinated degree removal versus going it on your own. And early on, we considered the local government our partner for the road match recovery, because again, that's where the true information is gonna come from. That's where it's all and the North Coast Builders Exchange was also in the mix.

Who are the local builders that are gonna be trustworthy, but understanding they didn't have the capacity to do all the rebuild.

So helping kind of identify again, the whole the whole approach is help people make good decisions, help people avoid falling into potholes. And the issues that came up along the way, you know, you you you deal with them together.

So every time we would do one of our one of our workshops at the church, and a lot of them were like standing room only, we had to use another room, I would always try to bring those those smart voices so that people would not get scammed and could keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So moving to insurance, which is always sort of at the center of what we're about, we have always helped people organize into insurance groups, so that everybody is insured with Allstate. You guys can talk and share information.

And that was something that really took off here. You had a lot of kind of community led with our help, kind of those type of groups of people supporting each other. Fast forward to today, what role insurance is playing in rebuilding more modern fire resilient homes? So there's a lot going on in LA on that front of like, okay, this is a great opportunity when you're rebuilding to rebuild a home that's going to be insurable.

So that's happening and there's a lot of innovation in if people have insurance gaps, which a very, very large number of people do, What kind of funding mechanisms are there to help them go they have hopefully, people have some insurance coverage for the code upgrades for those improvements.

But a lot of people don't have enough, which is why it's great to sort of lay those codes out in the beginning, so you can know what your shortfall is gonna be with your insurance. So there's some innovation going on with sources of funding to get your house up to the code. Now insurance obviously has become a huge issue with a lot of people getting non renewed in particularly in woo wee areas and areas that have had a previous wildfire.

And our organization had seen that happen. We saw it after the Oakland Berkeley fires.

We set up something called Match Up then, where we worked with the city of Oakland, cities of Oakland and Berkeley and the independent agents, local trade association, and basically just sort of help people, like there's life after you get dropped by State Farm, there may be somebody else that wants you, and we just kind of did it. That fixed it within about a year, but when that stopped happening, it was right before the tragic fires that this community hit these communities.

And so we started having this insurance crisis manifesting in 2016. And then when we had all the fires that were here, we had and then followed by Camp and followed by Woolsey and Thomas and then a lot of other factors that you are well aware of being up there in SAC and sitting through hearings, understanding that we had a sort of a perfect storm where we found out there were 120,000,000 dead trees along the spine of the Sierras and insurers found that out too.

And then we had this big explosion in InsurTech, aerial images, data mining, AI, risk scoring, and all those things that combined to make insurance harder for people to get. And I'd say as much pain as people are going through with having to shop when they've been dropped and then maybe struggle to avoid going on the fare plan and now the premiums, The one silver lining of it is it is really fast forwarded people's willingness to make risk reduction improvements and to and also voters to support measures, tax measures that such as in Marin, the Marin Wildfire Authority was set up with a as a result of a ballot measure.

So Sonoma remains I would say in the forefront of efforts, both you talked about Cope and some of the Cope people participate in this working group that we run, where what we're all trying to do is speak the same messaging and collaborate. When I say we, I'm talking about agencies like Paul's and as well as counties. And it really when it comes to getting people to do the things that insurance companies want to see you do,

which is really the Risk reduction is the most powerful antidote to the insurance crisis, right? The more they're saying risk is increased and we acknowledge that is true. What can we we're not powerless. So what can we do? Well, that's that's where all the action is. Right? That's

Yeah. On that. Right. You hit it on the head. I mean, adoption is zone zero. What what kind of impact could that have on coverage levels or rates? Regional wildfire prevention work? From what you're seeing, what kind of impact are those having?

Well, what we're seeing is insurers are getting under the tent with us as believers that we're not powerless to against wildfire risk that we can actually there's a lot of things we can do and there are a lot of people doing it. So the fact that there are now thousands of Firewise communities across the state and Fire Safe Councils continuing to proliferate is a hugely helpful thing.

There is an insurance company representative here today and I had to give him a huge thanks, because what we're seeing, it's a little slower than we'd like, but we are starting to see insurance companies getting on board with rewarding homeowners who have done things individually, but also who live in communities that have shown a commitment, which clearly this community has.

A commitment to maintaining and increasing the firefighting resources, to doing defensible space work, to having programs in place that facilitate risk reduction both at the parcel and the community level. We're starting to see, and I can call a couple insurers out by name, CSAA was an early agreed to come on to my working group meetings, my monthly meetings, and tell us, for say, now that we have two sets of standards, safer from wildfires and the IBHS, wildfire prepared home, they're almost identical.

I'm fine with their main two because and I like why we supported SB 1 or AB 1, I'm sorry, was that I'm getting ahead of you there as a which house you're in, is that we do need the standards to continue to kind of be a little you know, if they want if if we learn more things about, about maybe maybe some it's not entirely bad to have some plants, that would those kind of flexibility with those standards helps us get more homes in compliance, which is obviously our goal.

So we had CSAA saying we will voluntarily agree to ensure a home that has a wildfire prepared home certificate. We already had USAA saying if the community is fire wise, we'll give them a discount. Now we have Mercury having made some very public gestures. Again, they sent somebody to my working group.

They met, connected through us with Rebuild Paradise, they went up there, saw what they're doing, committed to writing more policies. So those were two huge wins. I've got a State Farm representative presenting at our working group next week. So I take those things as progress. Right?

Because when I first we first start talking to the insurers, they were like, don't mandate discounts that we don't have data to justify. They've come a long way to understanding that they wanna stay in the market in California, but they need to see the level of commitment that this community is demonstrating. And we're seeing it happening.

Well put. So let's talk about the state level kind of possible actions at this point. And thanks for the shout out of AB 1 relating to beefing up the safer from wildfires program. But what can the state legislature do to ensure insurance companies are incentivizing improvements like home hardening and defensible space?

It's a very tough question of do you mandate and then we become the only state in the country that is mandating underwriting, right? That's sort of been a third rail for insurers. You don't tell us who our customers can be or not. So I think that we've got you've put the standards in place. We've got to definitely find some ways to fund to make up for the fact that we lost the BRIC funding, but also to finance those grants.

And I'm work we work in Colorado as well. And Colorado just just got just passed a bill this session that sets up an enterprise program within the DOI, so it's similar to what we have. But they got insurers to agree that a portion of their premium taxes would pay for the grants and insurers did not oppose that. So this is the first problem program I've seen in the entire country where insurers are now agreeing to contribute some money towards mitigation grants.

So I would we should look at that.

And I think that I'm still on the fence about there was a bill that didn't go through this year, because I'm nervous. We're we're seeing progress and we had those horrible fires in LA, which the insurers, you know, took a a really big hit there and they're very concerned about, you know, smoke claims and all this stuff. So I'm kind of, you know, I'm more I guess I would say, keep doing what you're doing. Find money. That's an easy thing for me to ask.

Try to find money to make up for, you know, some of the, what we've lost for mitigation grants. And then I would say insurers really want to see the codes, the stronger building codes in the counties. And again, this is a really big tension, right? When you tell people to uglify their homes, right, now you have to get rid of your beautiful plants that you love, you've got it. That's a messaging challenge.

It's a financial challenge. But the reality is insurers will reward communities that have the stronger building codes. That was a big reason why they agreed to insure more homes in Butte, not just the fact that people were putting gravels around their homes and taking it seriously, but also because of the adoption of the code. So I would say, you know, where the legislature has the ability to incentivize counties, you know, to strengthen their building codes is sort of a tangible thing there. So that's something.

I think you're doing a lot of things right, and I would say maybe give it another year before you pass a mandate because we that ensure must renew or must offer a policy.

That said, we're supporting fifteen fifty nine, which is the aerial images, which would give people the right if an insurer is using aerial images to non renew a home that that bill would give the homeowner the ability to get those images and get information from the insurer about the specific conditions that are problematic and give them enough time to remedy those conditions before the policy expires.

So I would say that's another I think maybe not seem that important, but it is important because where we've seen technology really hurt the homeowners is that it's I call it TMI. Like they've been on these risks for decades, but suddenly they're getting these fancy reports that have all these red dots on the trees and identify all these flaws. And it's catching people by surprise.

And so we have this we've got to give them give the homeowner a fair shot, like tell them what the problem is, give them a chance to fix it, and then if they do renew. So I think we're we're getting there. We're seeing more insurers voluntarily rewarding. So maybe give a little more time before we, you know, put the hammer down and and force them is kind of my general thinking now. But I'm open to other views always.

No. I appreciate that. I asked Scott about attention that exists. I'm gonna give you a minute to editorialize as well. Obviously, the SB 254 report came out. We fully anticipate that before the session is out in August that a bill or an attempt to address some of the SB 254 report will surface. And there there's obviously gonna create a tension then between the investor owned utilities, the insurance groups, wildfire survivors, and local government. So I'm just gonna give you a chance to kind of editorialize a little bit on that or bring up considerations that we as legislators should keep in the back of our minds as we're working through that issue?

Well, I was gonna say, can I say no thank you to answering? No. I'm joking. It's obviously very, very complicated, inverse and I think that the utilities, they have been spending a lot of money on risk reduction and we work with there's a professor at Stanford that you may have heard, Michael Wara, who's doing a lot of really groundbreaking. We're sort of thought partners.

We talk all the time about first, we want to make sure that everything that the utilities have been doing in terms of coated wire and undergrounding is getting to the modelers that insurers are now using to base their rates on so that anything anybody is doing gets, you know, to reduce risk, gets registered with insurers so that they know what's happening and all that.

I think I'm not going to say anything about like changing the inverse rules, although I do think that that is is just going to be continue to be a huge challenge. Now I think the fund is going to be wiped out, right, we know that by the fires and where do we go.

I am not in favor of taking coverage for wildfires out of your basic home policy because I've seen what happened to earthquake insurance that no one has it anymore once we let insurers take it out.

So whether we create some sort of state reinsurance facility, we're exploring that, we're having I'm having a meeting with the guy who used to run the CEA, the California Earthquake Authority next week, and the guy in Florida who built their state disaster, basically like a reinsurance fund, to see if if that's something that we that would maybe help.

Because, you know, it's it's it's the fact that, you know, unfortunately, the fact that there if there's a utility at fault in a wildfire is is is hugely it it's not. I mean, to say that it's helpful is feels cruel and horrible, but the it's financially helpful to the survivors who are able to make up for their insurance shortfall. Obviously, that's not the ideal. Right?

We would rather have people be properly insured because we have this disparity where people who lost their home in Palisades do not have that same, you know, up that same source of extra money that the people on the Eaton side have.

So I would just say, I don't envy you your jobs here, but there's a lot of good minds that are working on it. I just don't want to see us do something extreme like allowing the peril wildfire to be taken out of the base policy. I just that this every just my instinct is that's just not the way we should go.

It's helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. Really helpful. Paul, let's just wrap up, with a couple questions, for this panel, and kinda ties into what we're talking about at this at this, home level, community level. What are the most impactful and cost effective first steps a homeowner can take to harden their home and implement defensible space? And, again, going back to the recognition, a lot of the homes we're talking about are old enough where they predate a lot of the updated, standards as well.

Yeah. So simply put, when people think of EmberCast as throwing rice against a home, you know, looking at where the rice is gonna be able to get into, we see some of the most beneficial low cost efforts around homes being gutter guards, vent screens, and really, we get it. There's a lot of residents, especially with some of the changes, to the new maps, for the high fire hazard severity zones.

There's a lot of residents that this is now, believe it or not, new to them, and that has become a challenge for us. It's really been interesting to see how in Coffey Park, there is discussions about during the rebuilding process, whether that should be included in our local wildland urban interface.

We did not include it, but now we've seen other parts of our community now in the Louie that have never had to deal with it and kind of ignored it, for years. And so they're now faced with being included in both the states, moderate and high, sorry, high and very high, which then we've opted to pull them into our local wildland urban interface to deal with some of these issues, to make some of these recommendations.

That is one of the challenges that we've seen is clearly fire doesn't know boundaries, not only with jurisdictions, but at some point, these fires go from being vegetation fires to wildland or bin or face fires to just interface fires. And so a lot of these low cost items like the vent screens, the gutter guards, and literally just cleaning up simple debris litter around the base of homes can really, go a long way.

And then how can kind of the collective we help homeowners take incremental steps to reduce their wildfire risk?

So that goes back to just one of the questions that we talked about earlier is just making some of these grant programs a lot easier to achieve. We're struggling right now with one of the hazard mitigation grant programs that likely will not be able to move forward just because of the amount of time that has transpired between the time that we initially submitted that notice of interest to where we still don't have the green light to actually physically do the work.

And a lot of residents now because of their designation, because they have to comply with defensible space, because they've seen these devastating wildfires continue to happen, have over time, started to take some of these proactive approaches, on their own to mitigate the risk and not wait. So I think anything that can be done to to cut a lot of that red tape, I totally get it.

With federal funding comes rules, but at some point in time, too much time goes by and it just doesn't make some of these these projects viable.

Well put. Thank you. Great discussion. So I think we're gonna now do a a quick wrap up panel before we open it up to public comment. If we can invite, Brad and Jennifer back up, we'll do a full panel of folks.

And we're really gonna end by looking at the outstanding wildfire prevention issues that still remain in Santa Rosa and the region as a whole. We know that there still remains significant need to address wildfire fire risk in the built in environment. That's kinda been the main takeaway this morning. Additionally, home hardening and defensible space improvements are often voluntary and can be costly, creating barriers to widespread adoption. The state also lacks a dedicated, consistent financing mechanism to support these upgrades at scale.

We're hearing that loud and clear. So I'll start by asking some general questions, which a whole panel should feel free to answer if they want. And we'll also leave time, again, at the end of these questions for any concluding comments by any of the panelists, as well. So panel, what are the most significant outstanding wildfire prevention issues in Santa Rosa, as we sit here today?

I'll kick off real quick. You know, we obviously have been able to somewhat reset our clock in a certain, part of our community. Our local wildland urban areas fire area as well as the state's moderate high and very high for the most part are pretty well built out in the city, but there is still room for development. Obviously, housing is a priority for the city.

One of the things we've actually been struggling some with somewhat with although there's a lot of rules, there's a lot of regulations around defensible space, home hardening, new construction.

But when it comes to actual development, we've looked at what's happened to us locally when it came to evacuations and dealing with some of the facilities and occupant types within our local wildland urban interface fire area, specifically skilled nursing facilities, mobile limited occupancies, care facilities.

That is one of the items that we are struggling with a little bit at a local level and kinda hoping that we see maybe the state take an approach to looking at what types of occupancies should potentially either be limited and or potentially have certain conditions that have to be mandated for those type of occupancies. And that's a really tricky one to deal with.

When you look at, some of the regulations regarding, for example, low income, high density housing, we're literally looking at facilitating the projects and rightfully so, but what you don't often see is parking requirements. You're relying on transportation.

You're relying on bicycles. You're relying on whether how close you are to a smart system or transportation system. But what happens when those occupancies either are placed in a high risk environment or there's a skilled nursing facility or a memory care unit, you're now potentially transferring that risk to the local jurisdiction to deal with that mitigation effort in the event of a wildfire. So that's one of the challenges, one of the struggles we're looking at from a preventative measure.

In terms of the Block Captain program or community engagement efforts, apathy and keeping people aware, having county, city supporting wildfire prevention fairs, festivals, specific community engagements events is great, But even at that, and we have neighbors who are new to our community. I've got a couple in our neighborhood who moved from out of the area. And when you mentioned the Tubbs fire, they say the what? And it's unbelievable.

I mean and so I think just having that increased awareness, and and that's something that we are trying to do through our Mark West Area Community Fund is once we get our new community park up and running, hopefully open up this summer, that's our goal, is to continue to have the awareness, to have fairs and festivals in the community, in the neighborhoods where people are living.

They're getting their garbage cans out. Get them in their community. Get them where they live on a monthly basis to continue that awareness.

I echo that 100%. So it's a lot of it is mindset, people's mindset, right? And it would be great if we did have a rule that if you do x, y, z, then you can then your insurance company will do x, y, z, right? We're not quite there. I think we do need to get there because it's a powerful incentive.

So a lot of the focus is on messaging. And also now that we have the list and it's very clear and everyone agrees on the things and we're working on getting more money into people's hands that can do those things, events like what Brad was just talking about, events that I know I've been to that the city hosts on a fairly regular basis.

And in Marin, they've, you know, they've got the they do their evacuation exercise, and they have it timed to go to end at a preparedness fair. So they're sort of you're herding people right down. Now those are the people who are paying attention and caring, and you're always gonna have the naysayers.

Right? You're gonna have the people in Brentwood who are like, you know, trying to who've been trying to delay zone zero. Right? There are people who say, don't tell me what to do and that's always going to be the case. We just have to keep on doing our best to have neighborly conversations and keep our firefighters popular even though they have to now deliver bad news. Right?

So what what Paul said, I I really agree with. You know, it's the the the push and pull between build as much housing as possible, but also make sure that we are as resilient from a wildfire standpoint as possible. And the conflicting legislation on that makes it extremely challenging, particularly in the unincorporated county where we're limited on where infrastructure is and we just have so much more space to worry about.

And then touching on what the follow-up topics were, the, well maybe that's getting a little too in the weeds, so never mind, I'll

I'll just say quickly from a water supply perspective, I think it's important to also really make sure we're considering our source waters, So we are 100%, or 95% reliant on our water wholesaler, and so making sure that our water supplies, Lake Sonoma, Lake Mendocino, are protected and considered vegetation management impacts from fighting wildfires and how that might affect our water quality because we don't want to have then a water quality issue with our whole water supply, so we have to really think about those pieces as well and I think that's an important piece to continue to look into.

Great, and you've all kind of touched on this to a large extent already, but really from the local kind of community government standpoint, where do you see the greatest need for statewide policy direction as it relates to wildfire prevention and resiliency?

So right now, I believe it's Senate Bill 973 is geared towards that prevention coordinator at a county level. I think it's really interesting to see how a community like Sonoma County that has Firewise communities literally exploding across the county, people trying to do the right thing. You have a county Fire Safe Council that the only way that County Fire Safe Council is able to act as the true Fire Safe Council and do all this coordination across jurisdictional boundaries, prioritize vegetation management

projects that have boundaries, prioritize vegetation management projects that have support of all the local fire agencies is currently being funded by the Sonoma County Fire Chiefs utilizing their own local measure h money. Having the state able to step in and be able to at least for a couple $100,000 a year or whatever it is, have that position guaranteed and in place for counties, would be huge.

I've got two items there. One is if you look at what the Department of Angels is doing in Los Angeles, funding the block captains, networks throughout all those communities, case study right there for what a properly funded block captain program looks like and how it's being implemented. Number two, increased funding and pace of scale from the resilient forest and fire capacity program. That was Dodd's program, I believe, that he ran a couple years ago. That supports block grants for regions to implement fire programs.

So I'll say it again. Increased funding and pace of scale from the resilient forest and fire capacity program. And please do check-in with the Department of Angels to see how they are running a stellar block captain program right

now. Great.

I would just add echo we can on the this the $9.73, which we're which we're supporting. This is this is the concept here is coordination, right? So you have a position in every county that is in theory doing the same thing, right? Different counties have different resources, but they're coordinating mitigation. That's I think, very pragmatic and important.

And you've already created this grant program, so in within the DOI for so figuring out I I don't even know what the conversations have been about how it's gonna be funded. I know it's not, right, yet.

To me, my hope is that, you know, anything that comes forward isn't more planning document requirements. You know, we've got the public safety element. We've got community wire wildfire protection plans. We've got the multi jurisdictional hazard mitigation plans. Each one of these is just kind of kicking the can where we're really looking at trying to find resources for implementation now rather than spending three years and doing environmental review and having a program to think about putting something in place.

The problem of so many things that we're dealing with are just from old houses, whether it's water efficiency, energy efficiency, wildfire resiliency, just so many components could be solved by not having structures being so out of date.

Yeah. And I I guess I would just echo similarly from a water supply perspective. Getting to implementation for really system resiliency and redundancy and providing that additional funding to help us get those things in place quicker, I think would be incredibly helpful.

Okay. So final question and maybe incorporate any final thoughts as well. Based on the lessons learned from the Tubbs fire, how would you advise other communities to best mitigate risk from future wildfires?

You know, I I feel like it's it's interesting from a mitigating the future risk. There's so many tools out there. There's there's information on such so many different levels. It typically comes down to the funding. Right?

Whether the people whether their agency has the funding to be doing the proactive work or not. It's really interesting to see even a community like Santa Rosa right now looking at budget shortfalls and reliant on grant funding. And where do we find that Harabedian of continuing to to provide the basic level of services and public safety, but still not losing sight of of, of the preventative measures.

I think there's a balance between not only trying to find the funding to make to meet the needs, to mitigate the risks, but I I think that missing piece is really how to take your your community and recover from what is seems to be inevitable and what continues to be the new normal until we can resolve all these different issues that that we're talking about.

I feel like really the the lessons that have that are to be learned are are utilizing a lot of what's taking place locally here, whether it's our resilient zoning ordinance that we passed, whether it's, how did Santa Rosa get to 98% rebuilt in Coffey Park and our percentage in Found Grove.

That to me is really where a lot of the visions need to be looking at. A lot of the the effort needs to be put towards, but ultimately not being afraid to reach out to the the fire marshal or the the planning and economic development director or the the permit director from the county. There's no reason to, to be, reinventing wheels or coming up with your own plans. It's it's seen what we've done as a lesson learned to, to be ready for our next one.

Just I think in the in the era of climate change and thinking that'll never happen to me. Living in California, I think we all should just assume it's gonna happen, whether it be earthquake, wildfire, flood, and be prepared for it, and get your communities ready for it, work together, and, just, you know, I think, you know, looking up at the meikamas from from Larkfield, knowing that there will be another wildfire. It's gonna happen again. What are we doing right now to get ready for it?

What are the resources, and how do we as a community leverage those together?

So I think, I feel that a lot of things, a lot of challenges that we face today between things happening from the Federal Government, etcetera, one of the things that gives me comfort and hope is the extent to which we are seeing the resources for risk reduction growing and the focus on risk reduction growing. And I would just say the private sector, it's not all like, oh, the government has to fund everything here, right?

The private sector, we're seeing a lot of money going into the risk reduction facilitating risk reductions, not just on the local fire departments. They do have inspection programs, but there are also now IBHS has this commercial program where you pay them a $125, and then they send somebody out and give you a report and tell you what to do. So some fire agencies are doing that, but there's also another option.

There's a third entrepreneurial entity that's building their business, same thing. You pay them $100 or $125 they'll come and they'll give you your prescription. So these two things can be happening at the same time where you're getting some private sector investment in risk reduction as well. And we're seeing that with just a lot of some innovation that's going something called Rock Rose Risk. They're promising people 35% discount and they're doing that.

They're actually a brokerage and they're cutting their commissions in order to do that. So you're seeing innovation, that I think is gonna help, with what the government is able to do.

My my advice would be to start forging relationships between the jurisdictions and the residents who live there like before the disaster, because I can't tell you how many times that having that knowledge of someone's property or someone's space that could hold a certain amount of equipment you know, really made the difference in being able to act quickly in a time of emergency.

So, you know, I think that you can't mandate people to, you know, have strong relationships, but that is the best thing for community to be able to, you know, respond to whatever comes up.

And just, I would say from a water perspective, continue to build the communications among emergency operations, among fire, look at the region and work together, communicate, coordinate, I think we have a really good example up here of how we've really shifted those communications between those response and those of us that operate the utilities from a water perspective.

And then I would also say, you know, use what we learned in terms of if you do have a fire and you lose pressure and there is a potential for contamination, we've outlined it pretty pretty well on what you can do very quickly. And so just be familiar, have that information and be prepared because unfortunately, I think Brad might be correct, it's not it's not if but when. So just being prepared.

Well, thank you. Thank you to all the panel members. Great job. Thank you for your ongoing work, your wisdom, and and willingness to kinda be that example. I know all of you, virtually are involved in regional and statewide, efforts right now.

So thank you. So we are now going to open up, the hearing to, members of the public who would like to, speak on any item, related to this. Please feel free to come up to the microphone here in the front. And if you can maybe limit your remarks to a couple minutes, if possible. Good afternoon.

And if you're comfortable identifying yourself. Certainly.

Yes. I'm Doctor. Betsy Herbert. I'm a environmental researcher. I live in Oakmont Village.

I'm a homeowner there. I appreciate all of the panelists great information and I'm fully in support of 90% of what everyone has said. Now, I just want to bring to your attention according to August 2025 research published in Nature, only 52% of fully home hardened structures built in the wildland urban interface survived the five recent disastrous California wildfires: Tubbs, Thomas, Camp, Kinkade, Glass. The study was funded by Cal Fire and it was using Cal Fire data.

The study revealed that the number one metric that best predicted if a house would burn in the wildland urban interface, When according to this study, only fifty two percent of them would survive another major wildfire even with full home hardening and clearing.

Case in point, the proposed Anoka housing development in Santa Rosa's wildland urban interface would build 275 more houses due to gridlock on Highway 12 in Montgomery Drive. According to the results of this study, building two seventy five more houses in this wild land which currently serves as a wildfire buffer for existing houses, which significantly increase the probability of housing loss in the next wildfire.

And if this housing development is approved by the city of Santa Rosa, who will be responsible for the predicted housing losses in the next wildfire? Thank you.

Hi. My name is, Jim Heppelmann. I'm a, rancher on Sonoma Mountain above Petaluma. I'm also the head of a Firewise Community Starting Up, and I appreciated many of the comments that Brad in particular made about the importance of block captains, but I just wanted to equate Firewise leaders to block captains because where I am we don't have blocks and we don't have block captains.

So I'm the block captain for 140 homes on 12,000 acres and I wanted to say it's tough getting this kind of community started.

It's a lot of work and it's a lot of cost. And, sure it'd be nice to have some help. You know, I think we're the last mile like the block captains. We're the last mile for all these good ideas. All this information about the zones and so forth.

If I don't walk down a driveway and get somebody's attention and make them listen to that, they're never gonna implement it. So just saying, like, we could use some help, some funding, just start up funding, just to help get things going. And then I think we could be self sufficient thereafter. Thanks.

Joe Makarowski is that working? Joe Makarowski, Sebastopol. I'm a ex firefighter. I'm a ex direct board of director of Rancho Adobe Fire. I've had a lot of experience with wildland fire.

Waking up this morning, I had to decide what shirt to wear. I put this one on deliberately, the Forks Fire. I was there on the initial attack. We were on this fire. It was knee high for hours.

We thought we had it beat. It exploded in front of our faces and became one of the biggest fires in California at at that time. So from my perspective, I mean, all this stuff is good and great in the cities. I'm out in the country and by the time an engine gets to our property, things are already gonna be big.

What I would like to see, coming from my director hat now, is changing the standards for volunteer firefighters, making it a lot easier to become a volunteer.

When I first started out, I was a volunteer. It was here's a pager, there's a truck, this makes noise, you get on, go. That was my training. Okay? Nowadays, you have to spend an entire year getting trained before they'll even let you on the engine.

Okay? I think that needs to change. The other thing that needs to change is we need to distribute quick attack out in the country. It's like a gentleman up on Sonoma Mountain. I've driven up Sonoma Mountain in an engine. You know how long that takes?

Three minutes.

You need to have, you know, quick attack vehicles dispersed, you know, so that you can get out there quickly with volunteers whose focus is fire. We've taken fire and when I joined, medicals were part of it. They dominated it. It became domination of the training. I'd say split it for volunteers.

You know, it's just too much training for volunteers. Minimize it. I mean, when your house is burning an example, I have a friend who lived in Bloomfield. They have volunteer fire department. There was a fire.

Nobody when the fire department was around, neighbors got into the truck, started it, figured out how to make water come out of it and put out the fire. Okay. It's not that hard. So I think we need to change the standards for volunteers and get the equipment out there. Thank you.

Hello. I'm David Cundiff, retired physician from LA County USC and in my retirement, I have written books about the the health care system. And in recent years, I've modeled and and looked at the climate crisis. And as a part of that climate crisis, is of course the wildfire crisis. And so, last month, the Marin IJ published my op ed piece about what to do to prevent catastrophic fire in Marin County.

And basically, it's to it's it's a big it's a big ask. And, what it would take in my modeling is eco villages with that are well staffed in Marin County. The modeling shows it would need 8,000 eco villagers, who build their own cob homes, who, develop their own, solar energy source, who grow their own food, who distribute it, sell it, and make it financially viable. So it isn't dependent on philanthropy, it isn't dependent on government.

It's a, a full on solution, to the prevention, which you're all talking about, to preventing catastrophic fires.

And, let me distribute this for you.

Good morning. Oh, no. Sorry. Good afternoon. My name is Jill Lowry.

I'm the CEO of IFSN, Individual and Family Support Network. But today, I'm putting a hat on top of my hat, which is disaster preparedness. I really appreciate the look at gaps that we're kinda looking at here today. But my big focus for the last ten years has been pre emergency as I believe Assemblyman Rogers had referenced, particularly in the WUI and rural areas. Response is critical and I have nothing but absolute beyond admiration for local and state fire.

But death really pisses me off when it's preventable with some things that we don't have and I'm gonna reference the gap there. I do wanna say I have some bullet points here, so I'll try to speed read here. Very disappointed in our national administration that they're considering a 75% cut in our National Forest Service for 2027, which is focused on the reduction of fire and research. And so the the question is what you guys can do. Please support whatever you can to mitigate that.

Recent article this week, I believe, in the Marin Journal, referencing the acknowledgment of, evacuation routes that are very challenging. Evacuation routes and shelters are my two big, big topics. Spent twenty years on Kauai. I'm very familiar with the Maui fires, and we probably know a lot of the same folks, both in fire and emergency management. Island time is a thing, and it's usually not because anybody doesn't want to move things forward.

It is because, sorry guys, government's slow in responding. So you guys are great. So I do wanna reference the Maui fires in the sense of climate change here since I've been back 18. That fire was a hurricane that caused a fire that created hell with over a 100 people who lost their lives partly because of crappy communication that just broke down, partly because of weather, partly because there were no evacuation routes, and there were certainly no shelters.

One of my big issues there, which I find coming back to Sonoma County, raise my kids in Sebastopol, No true disaster shelters that are class a fireproof that actually can save people's lives in really vulnerable areas.

That would have been a little bit beneficial, but the evacuation routes are also key. The one road in, one road out, which is extremely well known in Hawaii, but I'm seeing it pretty much nationwide also. I want to advocate for disaster shelters, multi hazard disaster shelters, wind, fire, seismic, particularly in vulnerable areas. And I want to point a finger at developers who I think there was a gal here, my person behind me here that referenced, More multi density housing in the Oakmont area.

Sonoma has a lot of discussions about more development going in there, infrastructure for evacuations, and infrastructure for evacuations, and for evacuations, and shelters don't exist.

And that really needs to change. I know funding is a challenge and everybody here that we've heard from needs funding. So I'm not even really gonna speak to that. But what I am gonna speak to is the private sector. So shelters we're about ready to launch a capital campaign over by Oakmont that speaks to all of this, partnering with private organizations to replace focus.

Your neighborhoods would become safer because those that evacuate can and those that cannot will have somewhere else to draw. So, sorry, when you write too many notes, you can't see any of them. I will close with, I want to highly underline, Chief Loewen Falls ask about grants and speeding those up. Doesn't come rolling in anytime soon, getting that to these people will be immeasurably helpful. Been there, done that, been to Washington twice, DC twice, talking on this matter.

Also encouraging new construction to be considered as part of those grants, not just retrofit. I also will close because I can't read any of this. I want to share again my appreciation for fire local and state And a group that never gets mentioned really very often, if at all, is search and rescue, as well as canine, particularly when you're talking about contaminants after a fire. Those folks rock. So thank you for listening and thank everybody here as well.

Hi. I'm Shelley Redding. I am here on a personal and professional level. I live out in Sebastopol, unincorporated area, and I volunteer and run a mutual water company. I also am a general manager of a special district down in West Marin County.

So I have a lot of associated references in this meeting and I appreciate the opportunity to be here. The two things that I really wanna speak to are volunteer fire departments and equipment needs, specifically for the changing environment of needing wildland fire equipment, type six vehicles are really important especially in West Marin. We partner with Marin County Fire down there as a mutual aid organization. Most of our calls are medical in need, but we do border state and national parks with lots of fuel load.

The other thing that I will say is that water companies and especially mutual water companies where I live, we are one of only two that have the capacity for a fire truck to pull up and take water for immediate response.

We don't have access to grants to help sustain that that cross kind of fire and water, for that need in a mutual water capacity in a rural area. I mean, we have 25 houses, but if Gold Ridge Fire were to pull up and say, We need your water, of course we're gonna give it. If we had more funding available for larger capacity, that would be a great help for initial response. And lastly, the block program sounds like an amazing opportunity.

I know that our area in the Hessel area of Sebastopol would probably benefit greatly from having a coordinator out there.

We've got a lot of property, there's a lot of fuel load in the area, lots of eucalyptus trees, and it would be very helpful to have a paid position of some sort or some sort of resources instead of always relying on volunteers out of their own pocket to do stuff. That's just what I see, thank you.

Good afternoon, my name is Jessica Self, and I'm the program manager with Sonoma County organizations active in disaster COAD, and I just wanted to recognize the important role that COAD has played since the twenty seventeen Tuck fire. COAD brings together non profits, government agencies, faith based communities, and volunteers, to coordinate resources, share information, support residents before, during, and after disasters. One of the key lessons from the past eight years is that resilience is built before disasters happen, by strengthening partnerships and communications across community.

COED has helped, Sonoma County respond more effectively, not only to wildfires, but floods, power shutoffs, and other emergencies. And as we continue to invest in wildfire prevention and preparedness, we encourage policymakers to support coordination networks like COAD, and COAD is not unique to Sonoma County.

It's throughout the, the state and nationwide, so so we highly recommend you keep us in mind. Thank you. Thank

you. Yeah. My name is Barry Hirsch. I was a District four block captain, and thank you, Brad, for the shout out. And, I just wanted to I thank everybody who, participated on the panel and for you, two assembly members for organizing this.

This has been great. A previous person mentioned mutual water companies, and I have served on the board of two mutual water companies. And I know I don't need to remind you that Sonoma County has more mutual water companies than any other, county in California. And, all I I just wanna pretty much know nothing about how to run a water company and kind of learn up.

And state water, is a great resource for us, but they're overburdened and can't really handle a lot of the problems that we have.

Mutual after the Tubbs fire. And it was it was really hard. And and so I just wanna remind you of that. I know it's probably on your radar screen, but you're overburdened and I get it. So mutual waters.

Another thing is I think a great lesson from Tubbs, which has been addressed by our county in just a really significant way and we are a model is our emergency warning systems. Right. But it's always been a concern of mine and I've raised it to supervisor Gore in particularly in the Kinkade was self-service. I mean, we're dependent on self-service. And when self-service fails, what do we have?

So I know that just individually, my wife and I have have tried to learn up on radio systems. I feel like, wow, what you know, if we have another catastrophic wildfire, where will we be if cell service fails? And I know work has been done to improve cell towers, but it's also it's a concern, and I'm just raising it here. Another thing that Chris raised with advanced energy rebuilds, and I get what Scott said, because I raised that very issue to supervisor Gore after the fire.

I said, man, this is a real opportunity. And I know that people were overburdened at that time. But I did I would proudly say that I was the first advanced energy rebuild to be completed under the Sonoma Clean Power Program. It was a great program. I'm glad I did it. I'm a retired contractor.

And at the time of the Tubbs Fire when my house was destroyed, my intention was to just rebuild with conventional energy systems. Jeff Cyphers came to one of our block captains meeting early on and outlined the program. And I said, man, I'm gonna take advantage of this, learn up on it, which I did. I'm really glad I did. And I appreciate the support, the funding support that we had from Sonoma Clean Power.

So I would just like to reinforce that that can be a really good thing. I mean, catastrophic wildfires, just increase particulate matter in the the cycle continues. So advanced energy is something that I would like to say we should do. And thanks again, and happy to be here.

Good afternoon. Assemblymember Connolly and Rogers Ben Nichols with Fire Safe Sonoma. I come to you today representing our countywide Fire Safe Council, after serving 32 fire seasons with CAL FIRE and final assignment being the west division operations here in Sonoma County. The conversation is about wildfire resilience. The fires are not a matter of if, but when, and we will see another Tubbs.

We will see another Hanley. We will see another Nuns. And so what is it we can do on the front side to prepare for those future wildfires? Our ecosystems are dependent on the fire return interval through beneficial fire outside of those wildfire events that's going to help that process. And I strongly, support you in your efforts to bring more beneficial fire here to the state of California.

To that end, prescribed practitioners prescribed fire practitioners have roughly one to two weeks in a best case scenario at the end of the wildfire season in the fall burning period, where conditions are the best suited for beneficial fire to be implemented. That is happening because of the impacts to grape production for the vintners across the state.

And so the ask would be that the conversation about, research towards what smoke taint is and isn't happening during those beneficial fire events to hopefully expand that window offered to prescribed fire practitioners to be able to bring that beneficial fire before we witness our future conflagration fires. To that end, on a good day, as as I was still working for the department, I could bring just over 100 firefighters to bear on a a fuels project to help prepare the county for those future fires.

Sonoma County has just shy of 500,000 residents. So this is what brings me to my role with Fire Safe Sonoma is working with our communities, working with all of our partners, grazers, prescribed fire practitioners, our our fire agencies, our land management organizations such as state parks and regional parks. There's a lot of great folks with a lot of great resources to be able to bring that wildfire resiliency to our communities. In that effort, fire marshal Lowenthal spoke to Senate bill 973, the wildfire County Coordinator Program.

We currently have a person on our team that's funded short term by a grant for that opportunity. And that person brings the opportunities for continued outreach, grants, public education, and facilitating the partner collaboration that we have here in the county.

And while we're seeing hits to our federal and now state grant opportunities, it's what resources we have working in the space that we can combine together towards that common goal. There's a great example out here in the Mark West Corridor, last year where public infrastructure, also known as county roads, Cal Fire, Permit Sonoma, and the Measure h fuels crew all combined resources to cut the vegetation along that critical evacuation corridor and potentially a future control line for future fires.

So while we would absolutely love additional resources, we are making sure that we're focusing on making sure that the entire team is pulling in one direction together rather than siloed out and and trying to tackle the problem individually. So continued support for those opportunities to bring people together. FireSafe Sonoma at the Firewise program, it was mentioned by one of our Firewise leaders who came today as well as his partner from another community, Phil Gross.

We currently have 40 Firewise communities in the county, anticipate probably 50 plus by the end of the year. Those numbers are a little greater than 22,000 residents in approximately 12,000 homes. We talk about investments into what's being done to address

If we can make I really appreciate the work you're doing as well. We're a little bit short on time with the space. Looks like we have a couple more speakers. Perfect.

Yep. Nope. I'll I'll tie that up. In that the home hardening component is not as crazy of a lift as we might expect. And it was mentioned earlier that gutter guards, vents, and just the material that we stack up around our houses are those great early steps that don't cost a lot of money that we can make a real impact as Fire Marshall Lowenthal indicated earlier about those embercast event fires downstream.

Look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Nothing like a microphone in front of a group of respected peers. Thank you for your time. I wanted to introduce myself and show face. Emily Oliver Farrin. I've been working in the fire world for the past three or four years now.

a microphone in front of a group of respected peers. Thank you for your time. I wanted to introduce myself and show face. Emily Oliver Farrin. I've been working in the fire world for the past three or four years now.

like

I've been on those fuels reduction crews. I've been part of Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, Go Indoor to Door, educating the public about Defense Force. And so I just wanted to be a breath of fresh air and say that I've met and worked with a bunch of young people and really motivated workers out there getting the work done. So thank you for being here and bringing your expertise.

I also wanted to highlight a point made by Chief Lowenthal about large occupancies and the specific wildfire prevention hazards that we need to put effort into, and specifically training and protocol for law enforcement and detention centers, specifically prisons.

Assembly member Connolly, we have San Quentin State Prison in your jurisdiction, and there isn't any training, infrastructure, or really time being put into protocols for floods and fires. And I wanted to mention that there are you know, I'll I'll save my time. Thank you so much. And, again, I just really am hopeful and respect all the work being done. So I look forward to our continued collaboration.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Hello. My name is Katie Oitzinger. I taught environmental science in high school. And I am thrilled with the work you are all doing and I really appreciate all that work and it gives me a lot of hope for the future. I do have a question about PFAS and their use in firefighting foam and how that affects our water quality.

And, I know that the Department of Defense has mandated researching materials without the fluorinated chemicals. And I'm wondering if the state is making any movement towards mandating PFAS free firefighting foam.

Thank you so much. So we're just taking public comment at this point. That being said, I am actually the chair of the Assembly Committee that deals with toxic chemicals like PFAS, would be happy to follow-up with you on that. Yeah. So please just reach out.

So with that, thank you to our public speakers. Amazing job. Thank you to all our attendees, for taking the time. Of course, again, thank you to our amazing panelists. Thank you to my colleague, Assemblymember Rogers.

We're gonna continue and look forward to working with our communities here in our district, statewide, and all of you as we got the message loud and clear, and there's many follow-up issues from this. The partnerships are the key. Thank you again to Redwood Credit Union for use of the space and for their amazing community partnership as well. So with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks again.