FUEL MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP
The Santa Lucia Preserve's 2nd Annual Firewise Event
THE PURPOSE BEHIND THIS WORKSHOP
The entire Preserve is within the Monterey County Regional Fire District (MCRFD) and is a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) community, where homes are intermingled with wildland. WUI communities are required to follow WUI codes that promote safer development by ensuring that life and property are uniformly protected from wildfire risk.
MCRFD enforces WUI codes and primarily protects life and property by providing our onsite Firefighter/Paramedic, conducting and enforcing annual defensible space inspections and working with individual homeowners on becoming more fire resilient.
In addition, MCRFD conducts emergency response training for SLP staff to supplement first responder capabilities across the Preserve.
The Preserve is also entirely located within the State Responsibility Area (SRA). The SRA is the area in the state where the State of California has the primary financial responsibility for the prevention and suppression of wildland fires. Therefore, both local and state resources (MCRFD and Cal Fire, respectively) work together as a robust initial attack to keep all vegetation fires small.
To create awareness for potential wildfire hazards, Cal Fire modeled the probability of wildfires occurring throughout the SRA and categorized them into Moderate, High and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.
NEW PROPOSED FIRE HAZARD SEVERITY ZONES
In 2022, Cal Fire updated the FHSZ map, which is currently under public review until Feb.3, and will be finalized by May 2023. Below is a comparison of the 2022 proposed changes and the current 2007 FHSZs.
Proposed 2022 FHSZ
WORKING TOGETHER TO REDUCE OUR WILDFIRE RISK
All WUI communities within the SRA are required by State law to create and maintain a defensible space and follow the WUI Chapter 7A building codes to reduce wildfire risk and loss of homes. That is why our community is working together with our fire agencies, partnering organizations and vendors to accomplish the main goal of living in a safer community from wildfires.
At the same time, we need to keep track of wildfire mitigation efforts to provide evidence of risk reduction to insurance companies through having a fuel management plan, getting annual defensible space inspections and maintaining our status as a Firewise Community.