Fwd: Please Sign-on to Letter Supporting SB 55 to Stop High Wildfire Development
Teri Shore
The Honorable Mike McGuire
Chair, Senate Governance & Finance Committee
State Capitol Building, Room 5061
Sacramento, CA 95814
Re: RE: SB 55 Very high fire hazard severity zone: state responsibility area: development prohibition – SUPPORT
Dear Senator McGuire and Committee Chairs,
The undersigned organizations from the North Bay and San Francisco Bay Area strongly support SB 55 by Senator Allen and Senator Stern that would prohibit new development in the Very High Fire Severity Zone (VHFSZ) and the State Responsibility Area (SRA) in California.
SB 55 is the clear first step in transitioning towards a safer coexistence with wildfires in California. Wildfires are a natural and necessary process in many of California’s ecosystems. But historical fire regimes have been dramatically disrupted in recent history by European colonization, development, logging, fire suppression and climate change.
California wildfires continue to grow increasingly frequent and devastating due to multiple factors including millions of homes in the Wildland Urban Interface, decades of fire suppression, and extreme weather due to climate change. It is clear that homes, infrastructure, and businesses in the Very High Fire Severity Zone are at a higher risk than ever before. Further development into the WUI will undoubtedly increase risk simply by increasing density in areas that have gone decades without proper planning resources to mitigate the risk. Such a complex problem requires significant, bold changes.
The North Bay, including Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Marin and neighboring counties have suffered extreme losses of life, home and property over the past five years. Now is the time to pivot away from business-as-usual in growth and development to achieve safer more wildfire resistant communities near jobs, schools and services. SB 55 will help lead the way.
Development in high fire-prone wildlands is leading to more human-caused ignitions where people live (Radeloff et al. 2018). Nearly all contempo rary wildfires in California are caused by human sources such as power lines, car sparks, cigarettes, and electrical equipment (Syphard et al. 2007; Balch et al. 2017). Building new developments in high fire-risk areas increases unintentional ignitions and places more people in danger. Since 2015 almost 200 people in the state have been killed in wildfires, more than 50,000 structures have burned down, hundreds of thousands have had to evacuate their homes and endure power outages, and millions have been exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke and air pollution.
Rampant sprawl development in fire-prone wildlands has also contributed to a dramatic increase in costs due to fire-suppression and damages. Costs in areas managed by Cal Fire were $23 billion during the 2015-2018 fire seasons, which is more than double the wildfire cost for the previous 26 years combined after adjusting for inflation. Fifteen of the 20 most destructive California wildfires have occurred in the past five years.
The VHFSV and SRA have been identified by Cal Fire as areas that are likely to burn within 30 to 50 years. And hotter, drier and windier conditions due to climate change make the landscape more conducive to wildfire ignitions and spread. Yet local officials continue to greenlight massive new developments for mostly mid- to high-income homes in high fire-prone areas that have repeatedly burned in wildfires.
Impacts of wildfire disproportionately affect vulnerable communities with less adaptive capacity to respond to and recover from hazards like wildfire. Low-income and minority communities
especially Native American, Black, Latinx and Southeast Asian communities, are the most marginalized groups when wildfires occur, in part, because they have fewer resources to have cars to evacuate, buy fire insurance, implement defensible space around their homes, or rebuild, and they have less access to disaster relief during recovery (Fothergill and Peak 2004; Morris 2018; Harnett 2018; Davies 2018; Richards 2019).
Health impacts from wildfires, particularly increased air pollution from fine particulates (PM2.5) in smoke, also disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, including low-income communities, people of color, children, the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions (Künzli et al. 2006; Delfino et al. 2009; Reid et al. 2016; Hutchinson et al. 2018; Jones et al. 2020).
As the Legislature attempts to address California’s looming housing crisis, the best solution to focus climate-smart growth in existing cities and towns near jobs, schools, public transit and other services. The State of California cannot afford to rely on sprawl into the wildland urban interface as means to end its housing crisis. SB 55 will reset California land use strategy by forcing development in urban infill, lower wildfire risk areas where jobs and transit opportunities are more readily available.
If current spawl-inducing land-use practices continue, instead of focusing on increasing affordable housing near city centers, between 640,000 to 1.2 million new homes will be built in the state’s highest wildfire-risk areas by 2050 (Mann et al. 2014).
We strongly support SB 55 because it sets a standard for all local jurisdictions to plan for development by prioritizing life and property. Bold land use policies that consider the state’s diverse fire history and ecology, like SB 55, will help improve our relationship with wildfire and ensure a safer and healthier future for both humans and wildlife.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Hanson
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www.OccupySonomaCounty.org
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<SB55NorthBaySignOnLetter.docx><SB 55 (Stern) Fire Safe Growth Fact Sheet 031021 (1).pdf>
Janus MATTHES
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