Assembly Select Committee Wildfire Prevention

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. 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 want to thank our panelists for their participation. As you'll soon see, an amazing group of folks. It's going to 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, an amazing group of folks who have put this hearing together, and Redwood Credit Union for hosting us. I also want to really give recognition and thanks to Redwood Credit Union for the role, the 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'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 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 want to 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.

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

Right. Thank you. Yeah. 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. I look forward to the discussion today.

Thank you. You know, 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 and 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 was 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 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 Nuns 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 Fire Safe Sonoma as a countywide fire safe council and watching agencies like us work hand in hand with the chiefs across the county and Fire Safe Sonoma to continue to educate the community.

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 enough You hear in some of the additional questions kind of the measures that we taken but kind of touching really quickly when you look at what happened in 2017 with 6,000 structures destroyed across the city and county, to then fast forward to 2020 where the education worked. And we had, 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.

There has been some time at this point.

But, you know, some of the highlights were from a response and preventative measure is everything from alert and warning to the vegetation management ordinance that we put in place. We've really looked very closely at the impacts that we experience. And, you know, I remember when Assembly Member 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 focus of implementing our ordinance, implementing additional staff, making resources available to the community to do everything that we can to mitigate that future risk.

Yeah, so we established our community wildfire protection plan in the city of Santa Rosa literally two weeks before the glass fire. It was kind of eerie to present to council a five-year document.

Yeah, so the glass occurred in 2020.

And two weeks before the glass fire started, we presented our community wildfire 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 ignited. So we knew that there was going to be impacts from that fire.

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 roadmap 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 glass fire. I happened 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 Garela Giucci unfortunately got to know each other really well through some significant incidents the Cal OAS director at the time looked at me and said, Paul, we can't keep meeting like this. What are you guys going to 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 projects, two Cal OES through federal funding, and were denied both of those NOIs. So you tell me what we need to do 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, a hot topic, kind of a lot of conversation around it still.

Yes, that's a great question, and we have the proof to back up the benefits of it. When we saw that we were going to 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 required 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 EmberCast 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 their own defensible space inspections on top of ours and really worked to mitigate that risk around that ignition-free zone and that quote-unquote zone zero. Fire Chief Scott Westrope 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 the home, and literally put themselves out. It was as photographic, memory. I mean, 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 benefits of that zone zero and why we continue to support and do work to not only minimize the zone zero, but other ignition sources around homes as well.

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 change based on dollars and cents on a cost estimate. And literally 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 can be done to turn around 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 kind of learning it as they fly it, the reporting requirements are a lot different from one another and can be very impactful on staff time.

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 not talking about just more vegetation management from a policy perspective or from a coordination perspective, what would you say the top consistent themes that people do wrong ahead of an emergency are?

Before the emergency or in the response to the emergency.

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

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.

Yeah, 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 it was a really striking visual on how you can help firefighters better respond to the disaster by doing the preparatory work up front.

Yeah, I'll let you dig in on the vegetation management in a second, but also Assemblymember Connelly and I both have bills this year working on prescribed burns, making it easier to do that preventative work. And I was a little bit surprised to find that there's only 69 certified burn bosses in the entire state of California that can assist our local fire departments and local folks with doing that work. So if you want to talk about vegetation management and talk a little bit about that up-front work, that would be helpful.

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

anything that can streamline them, you'd obviously have Santa Rosa's support. It is very challenging for communities and to be potentially one of those communities that puts that much effort into providing the outreach and minimizing the impacts of the 911 system in a densely populated area like that to then not have it pulled off like we had before is challenging I often joked that I feel like the only way we be able to successfully do it is literally have a skywriter on standby and have them 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.

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 theoretically 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 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 realize 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 wild land urban interface We watched the challenges associated with it in the glass fire and watched how many resources we had to tie up to fully extinguish and deal with how tricky and difficult to extinguish the gorilla hair mulch is and how receptive it is to amber 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 going to 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-of-way or within 100 feet of a defenseless 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 acres in size, they had to cut a 30-foot break around the perimeter. When we watched 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 level of work to ultimately make our community as safe as we can, given the changes that we're seeing in our ecology locally.

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, it's more than just a badge of honor, I would say, but it's a true kinship and friendship that develops. And when I ran into Barry Hirsch at the doorway, the first thing you do is you hug. And, man, that's community right there. And you can't rebuild after a 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 you know the block captain program 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 an unincorporated block captain, county supervisors, was key. We would meet every week. It was every Wednesday at 730. 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 want to get people home as fast as you can and get businesses up and running.

So I think you've got folks in this awful club, this wildfire survivor club, right? Don't want to 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 Zero 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 Mark West Area Community Fund, our 501c3 nonprofit in the Mark West 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 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 a 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.

But from that community standpoint, what are you seeing? So speaking from the Larkfield area, as an example, 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, same with Paul. I know Paul does a ton of outreach with the City of Santa Rosa residents to develop those mitigation and fire prevention efforts and programs. One of the biggest things, though, that is concerning is, great, we have all these plans. 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, we're seeing the investments in our fire systems and the equipment and staffing. But statewide, where's that cap-and-trade money going? Where's that revenue long-term? How's that going to trickle down into local mitigation and prevention plans? Are we going to be 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 going to 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, hey, let's fund some block captain programs. I'll tell you right now, when we traveled down to L.A. to help get their block captain programs up and running in Altadena 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? The Department of Angels has 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 were 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 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 my pitch Let 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 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 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 foundational funding chapter in the future proposition that could support communities across the state?

Again, I'm taking it from a block captain perspective. would absolutely love to see some type of a staff training program for the legislative staff on what a block captain is, how to get a network up and running, a playbook, which After the Fire USA has, but, you know, like in L.A. I know Paul and I were called many times to speak with legislative staff down there on, okay, how do we organize our community? So let's get out ahead of it this time. Let's get 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 folks in L.A. and there's still a major disconnect between the mayor's office and the council member's 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 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 in point, just case in 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's the time to do it. So after listening to block captains in Larkfield, who were all in septic tanks, they wanted to connect a 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 million sitting in a money market account because we had I just sold a building of ours. I mean, timing was unfortunately good. But it was at the decision of the board of supervisors to take that million and invest it in a 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 million laying around to do that? That's an issue. There's got to be a financial solution statewide to help those communities build back better on the utility side of the house. We felt very fortunate and 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.

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 had 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 Okrepke 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 utilizing it. They are. And hats off to 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 utilize this network, you know, having it be a new thing, right? 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 resource is out there so they can just fast dial that number.

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?

Yep.

Yeah, appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to 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&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 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 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 a 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 PULLED recovery And one of the most important things is to really recognize that when 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 2020 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.

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 that?

where we can look at how we can 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, you know, 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 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.

And I just would say thank you for that comment. And I do want to 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 million.

We're going to next move to our next panel. I'm going to ask Paul to stay put. We'll invite Scott Orr and Amy Bach to the dais or the panel. And this next discussion is going to focus on physical rebuilding after the Tubbs fire and how Santa Rosa and residents in 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.

Scott. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. So I'm Scott Orr, the director for Permit Sonoma, which is the county Sonoma's 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 Kincaid in 2019 and Wallbridge and Glass and Myers fire. So, you know, this is very close to me. it's really what solidified, you know, what public service was for me, you know, waking up in 2017, dropping my cat off at a neighbor's house and going to the emergency operations center. On the other side of the fires, I was responsible for the permitting of a number of the rebuilds in the Mark West area, you know, including a apartment complex that burned down. And it's, you know, 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 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.

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'd need. You know, some people just needed, you know, a building permit for a single family dwelling. But some people needed 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, as silly as it sounds, design review because of our in-place requirements, 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 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 that 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 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.

So the starting point is education. There's so many complex regulations in a million different places. It's really about letting homeowners know exactly what they can do to make their home safer, knowing that each thing that's going to make their home safer also costs money. And so one of the things that we've stood up since 2017 is our 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 land. But, you know, being someone that isn't just focused on the fire piece, you know, we have a broad swath of, you know, kind of touch points along the entitlement path. We also try to start the conversation before property is 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. so that people don't get started and then find themselves suddenly living in a very high fire hazard severity zone with a bunch of other issues. So kind of all along the process from vacant land to existing homes and education, it's really touched everything.

because with the cancellation of, you know, our $40 million 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 sails 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 going to follow to help fund that home hardening because we're not just looking wildlands 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, you know, particularly as we see, you know, the additional rules, you know, coming into place, whether it's zone zero or defensible space, things like that. So it's highlighting the importance 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.

You did see some options, like Sonoma Clean Power worked 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, you rebuild to 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 think that that's maybe a space that, you know, local governments or the state can look at, you know, like kind of what's the value add? Like, okay, yes, you want to get back in as fast as possible, but if you do it in this way, maybe there's other ways that we can make it better or faster or just lower that financial incentive to not do it.

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.

Great. Why don't we move to Amy? And thank you for all your work, Amy. Question is, how did United Policyholders help neighborhoods like Coffee 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.

Are you talking about Trish Pesenti or Environmental Hall?

Is she a Mertens?

Well, whoever she was, we would have her there explaining to people

I mean, adoption of zone zero, 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 put. So let's talk about the state-level kind of possible actions at this point. And thanks for the shout-out of AB1 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 You know it a very tough question of you know do you mandate and then we become the only state in the country that you know is mandating underwriting right

No, I appreciate that. I asked Scott about attention that exists. I'm going to 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 SB254 report will surface. And there's obviously going to create a tension then between the investor-owned utilities, the insurance groups, wildfire survivors, and local government. So I'm just going to 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 are working through that issue.

It's helpful. Thank you. Yeah, really helpful. Paul, let's just wrap up with a couple questions for this panel and kind of ties into what we're talking about 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.

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

If we can invite Brad and Jennifer back up. We'll do a full panel of folks. And we're really going to 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 risk in the built-in environment. That's kind of 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 echo that 100%. So 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 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, you know, 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 so they 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 do their evacuation exercise and they have it time to end at a preparedness. So they're sort of herding people right down. Now, those are the people who are paying attention and caring, and you're always going to have the naysayers, right? You're going to have the people in Brentwood who have 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.

So what Paul said I really agree with. You know, it's the push and pull between build as much housing as possible, but also, you know, make sure that we are as resilient from a wildfire standpoint as possible. And, you know, 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, well, maybe that's getting a little too in the weeds, so never mind. 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

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 fire-wise 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 support of all the local fire agencies is currently being funded by the Sonoma County Fire Chiefs utilizing their own local measure age money. Having the state able to step in and be able to at least for a couple hundred thousand dollars a year or whatever it is have that position guaranteed and in place for counties would be huge.

about how it's going to 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 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 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 feel like it's interesting from mitigating the future risk. There's so many tools out there. There's information on so many different levels. It typically comes down to the funding, right? whether the 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 happy median of continuing to provide the basic level of services and public safety but still not losing sight of the preventative measures? I think there's a balance between not only trying to find the funding to meet the needs, to mitigate the risks, but I think that missing piece is really how to take your community and recover from what seems to be inevitable and what continues to be the new normal until we can resolve all these different issues that we're talking about. I feel like really the lessons that are to be learned 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 Coffee Park and our percentage in Fountain Grove. That, to me, is really where a lot of the visions need to be looking at, a lot of the effort needs to be put towards, but ultimately not being afraid to reach out to the fire marshal or the planning and economic development director or the permit director from the county. there's no reason to to be reinventing wheels or coming up with their 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 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 meacamas from Larkfield, knowing that there will be another wildfire. It's going to 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, you know, a lot of things, a lot of challenges that we face today, between things happening from the federal government, et cetera. 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 you know it not all like oh the government has to fund everything here right the private sector we 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 $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 some innovation that's going – something called Rock Rose Risk. They're promising people a 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 going to help with what the government is able to do. my advice would be to start forging relationships between the you know the jurisdictions and the residents who live there like before the disaster because i can't tell you how many times that you know having that knowledge of someone's property or someone's space that could hold a certain amount of you know equipment you know really made the difference in being able to act quickly in a time 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 a 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 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 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 willingness to kind of 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 could maybe limit your remarks to a couple minutes if possible. Good afternoon. And if you comfortable identifying yourself Certainly Yes I Dr Betsy Herbert I an environmental researcher I live in Oakmont Village I 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, Kincaid, 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 was its close proximity to other houses. Why, then, does the state of California incentivize building new high-density houses in the wildland-urban interface, when according to this study only 52% of them would survive another major wildfire even with full home hardening and clearing. Case in point, the proposed El Noka housing development in Santa Rosa's wildland urban interface would build 275 more houses in an undeveloped 69-acre wildland immediately adjacent to Oakmont Village and other existing housing where residents barely escaped during past wildfire evacuations due to gridlock on Highway 12 and Montgomery Drive. According to the results of this study, building 275 more houses in this wildland, which currently serves as a wildfire buffer for existing houses, would 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. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jim Heppelman. 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. 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 would be nice to have some help. 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 going to 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 an ex-firefighter. I an ex director of Rancho Adobe Fire I 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 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 going to 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? 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 a volunteer fire department. There was a fire. Nobody in 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 L.A. County, USC. And in my retirement, I have written books about the health care system. And in recent years, I've modeled 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 a big ask. And what it would take in my modeling is eco-villages 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 full-on solution to the prevention, which you're all talking about, to preventing catastrophic fires. And let me distribute this for you. Thank you very much. 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 kind of looking at here today. But my big focus for the last 10 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 going to reference the gap there. I do want to 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 question is what you guys can do. Please support whatever you can to mitigate that. A recent article this week, I believe, in the Marine Journal, referencing the acknowledgement of evacuation routes that are very challenging. Evacuation routes and shelters are my two big, big topics. I spent 20 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 want to reference the Maui fires in the sense of climate change here since I've I've been back 18 months. That fire was a hurricane that caused a fire that created hell with over 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 the basketball No true disaster shelters that are Class A fireproof that actually can save people 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. So 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 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 going to speak to that, but what I am going to 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 gymnasiums, to replace any building that you need with a shelter. If that became a focus, your neighborhoods would become safer because those that evacuate can, and those that cannot will have somewhere else to go. 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 Lowenthal's ask about grants and speeding those up. Even if the money doesn't come rolling in anytime soon, getting that to these people will be immeasurably helpful. Been there, done that, been to Washington twice, D.C. 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 Sevastopol, an incorporated 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 want to speak to are volunteer fire departments and equipment needs, specifically for the changing environment of needing wildland fire equipment. Type 6 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 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 Goldridge Fire were to pull up and say, we need your water, of course we're going to 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 wanted to say. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Jessica Self, and I'm the program manager with Sonoma County Organizations Active and Disaster COAD. And I just wanted to recognize the important role that COAD has played since the 2017 TEP fire COED 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 state and nationwide. So we highly recommend you keep us in mind. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Barry Hirsch. I was a District 4 block captain. And thank you, Brad, for the shout-out. And I just wanted to thank everybody who participated on the panel and for you, two Assembly members, for organizing this. This has been great. I just want to quickly mention a couple of things. 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 I just want to say that mutual water companies need support. These are public water companies that are privately owned that are run by volunteers who 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 overburdened and can really handle a lot of the problems that we have And in terms of emergencies, and I was involved in a mutual after the Tubbs fire, and it was really hard. And so I just want to 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. But it's always been a concern of mine, and I've raised it to Supervisor Gore, particularly in the Kincaid, was cell service. I mean, we're dependent on cell service, and when cell service fails, what do we have? So I know that just individually my wife and I have tried to learn up on radio systems, and sometimes 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 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 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 going to 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 increased particulate matter, and 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 Conley 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 by 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 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. supports you in your efforts to bring more beneficial fire here to the state of California. To that end, 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 I was still working for the department, I could bring just over 100 firefighters to bear on 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 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 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 trying to tackle the problem individually. So continued support for those opportunities to bring people together. Fire Safe Sonoma, 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. 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 tie that up in that the home hardening component is not as crazy of a lift as we might expect. 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 Marshal Lowenthal indicated earlier about those ember cast 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 to get your heart pumping Thank you for your time. I wanted to introduce myself and show face. I'm Emily Oliver Farron. I've been working in the fire world for the past three or four years now. I've been on those fuels reduction crews. I've been part of Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, going door-to-door, educating the public about defensible space. And so I just wanted to kind of 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 cede 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. Thanks. Thank you.

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. I would be happy to follow up with you on that. 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 going to 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 the space and for their amazing community partnership as well. So with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thanks again. Thank you.