Just before the Santa Barbara County Fire Department declared June 5 as the start of this year’s high fire season, it proposed changes to county wildfire policy.
County Fire Marshal Rob Hazard presented those amendments to wildfire protocols during the county Planning Commission’s May 31 meeting. Hazard described the amendment drafting process as a collaboration between all fire departments throughout the county.
One of the recommended actions is for the county to develop a “like-for-like” ordinance, which would allow people to rebuild structures that burned down in high wildfire risk areas in less riskier locations, “without the need for a discretionary entitlement,” as long as the rebuild complies with other zoning and environmental regulations, according to the county staff report.
“This is all about literally saving lives, and what could be a higher purpose for us,” county Planning Commissioner John Parke said in support of the policy update, shortly before it was unanimously approved by the Planning Commission.
With the Planning Commission’s recommendation for adoption, the proposal will be brought before the county Board of Supervisors on July 11 for final approval. County staff has been working with the county Fire Department, Cal Fire, and other agencies on the proposed policy amendments since the spring of 2022.
“As a longtime inhabitant of what could be referred to as a hazard zone with respect to fire, this effort that staff has undertaken, in cooperation with fire agencies … couldn’t come at a better time,” Planning Commissioner C. Michael Cooney said. “This collaboration is never more important than it is right now.”
During the policy update presentation, county planner Whitney Wilkinson outlined some new wildfire information resources available to the public, including an interactive map of Santa Barbara County that identifies residential developments in fire hazard areas that have only one emergency evacuation route.
“The state will eventually provide guidance on what qualifies as a residential development, but their unofficial guidance is to have each jurisdiction determine how they want to define these areas,” Wilkinson said. “For instance, we defined a neighborhood as containing at least 30 lots.”
Users of the interactive map, available on the county Planning and Development Department’s website, can customize the map to show how different neighborhoods throughout the county fit into other types of hazard zones as well.
“We mapped these neighborhoods in various hazard zones, including tsunami and dam inundation zones, and FEMA flood hazard zones in addition to the fire hazard severity zones,” Wilkinson said.
Additional info on local wildfire mitigation practices is available at sbcfire.com/wildfire.
This article appears in Jun 8-18, 2023.
