A NEW STRATEGY FOR ADDRESSING THE WILDFIRE EPIDEMIC IN CALIFORNIA - Michael Wara | April 2021

Last is a suggestion of how to restructure responsibilities for fire management to create clear accountability for execution of the different elements of the overall strategy and increase the likelihood of sustained fiscal commitment at sufficient scale to make a difference for California. [...] A better strategy would be to begin with low cost and highest likelihood interventions in a large enough suite of homes in high risk areas and then to continue to modify and improve the program as loss experience accumulates for the universe of treated and untreated homes. [...] A recent successful example of the use of a fuel break was in the CZU Lightning Complex Fire where an extensive fuel break investment by UC Santa Cruz allowed firefighters to hold the advance of the wildfire at the north side of campus, preventing what would have been a potentially massive and irreparable loss to the UC system physical plant and educational mission. [...] Firefighters were given standardized information prepared by the special district as the Thomas Fire approached so that they had good STANFORD WOODS INSTITUTE A New Strategy for Addressing the Wildfire Epidemic in California 7 information on where to stage operations in the community and how to fully utilize the fire protection infrastructure that the community had invested in and prepared3. [...] But the key issue for all stakeholders to consider is how to improve the preparedness situation in the state in a fashion that is significant enough to stabilize what is a rapidly deteriorating situation and in the context of a warming climate.