Reimagining Community Wildfire Planning in Ventura County

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters. In the western United States, we expect to see longer, hotter droughts and more destructive wildfires, creating not only ecological harm but also raising human health concerns (Laska and Morrow 2006; Kolden and Henson 2019; Méndez, Flores-Haro, and Zucker 2020; Field, C.B. et. al. (eds.) 2012). These concerns are further exacerbated by social and political structures that limit individual mobility, income and wealth-building, and political power, which decreases the resources socially vulnerable groups have to mitigate disaster impacts. This is observed along racial, economic, age, and gender divides, among others, and social vulnerability can be compounded by overlapping identities (Laska and Morrow 2006, Cutter, Boruff, and Shirley 2003, Méndez, et. al. 2020).

Social vulnerability refers to the potential negative effects on communities caused by external stresses on human health. The CDC has created a  Social Vulnerability Index  (SVI) that assigns an SVI score to each census tract in the US, based on socioeconomic, household composition, language, and housing/transportation data.

The map below shows the SVI scores of tracts within Ventura County, as well as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). The WUI indicates where the natural environment meets the built environment. Those living in a high-SVI census tract and within the WUI are especially vulnerable to wildfire events. This map allows us to identify communities with higher biophysical and social risk, such as Fillmore, Piru, and Santa Paula.

In collaboration with the Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council (VRFSC), our project seeks to identify communities in Ventura County who are disproportionately burdened with the risk of wildfire impacts and to collect community feedback on how VRFSC can best serve their needs.

Our work contributes to VRFSC’s development of a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), which will guide county-wide wildfire management initiatives in the coming years. Lessons learned and recommendations from our findings will contribute to the field of wildfire management by providing a model for other fire management organizations and local governments to address social vulnerability concerns and enable equitable outcomes.

The research team designed a written survey to collect information on Ventura residents’ perceptions, experiences, and concerns related to wildfire.

The survey, disseminated in both English and Spanish, consisted of 24 questions, including 6 questions related to social demographics, 7 questions on wildfire experience and response, and 6 questions related to the CWPP and wildfire planning. We collected 471 responses in total.

The findings from the written surveys provided a basis for further qualitative research in the form of focus groups with Ventura County residents representing low-income, migrant, Spanish- and Mixteco-speaking communities. We aimed to gain additional, more nuanced feedback at the community scale through focus groups.

• Focus groups elevated concerns about the lack of safe evacuation routes, and desires for practical strategies for reducing wildfire risk. The Spanish focus group highlighted significant barriers that keep Spanish and Mixteco -speaking communities from receiving relevant wildfire preparation information and timely emergency notifications.

Through our survey and focus groups, we are able to identify successful strategies and opportunities that exist to reduce wildfire risk in Ventura County. Using this qualitative data, we explore a “projected state” of wildfire planning in 2025 in the absence of significant shifts in wildfire management and community engagement. 

Our analysis of the projected state shows us that vulnerable communities will continue to be hit hardest when it comes to wildfire risk, largely due to language barriers and lack of access to adequate resources. Understanding the state of current wildfire planning can help inform how it can be transformed to better serve the Ventura community and make residents feel safer about living with fire.

If the voices of vulnerable communities are included in the planning process, outcomes for residents across the county can improve. The current CWPP for Ventura County (from 2010) fails to examine the differences in experience and readiness for wildfire among various communities and how that affects resident needs, and potential agency coordination strategies.

A reimagined CWPP would continue to act on the county-wide scale but pull insights from local communities to address the multifaceted impacts of wildfire within individual communities. Local communities know their area and needs the best, so supporting them as primary authors or contributors with the Fire Safe Council playing a supporting role would make these plans more suitable to the unique needs of communities.

The vast majority of respondents were not familiar with the current Community Wildfire Protection Plan, though they indicated a desire to actively participate in or be informed of future planning efforts. A future, reimagined state of wildfire planning would ideally include:

The Kindling Equity team, along with Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council, continues to research how highly-impacted groups are affected by wildfire. This includes completing several semi-structured interviews with community experts in December and January. The interviews will complement our survey and focus group data by adding perspectives that have not been sufficiently considered. 

Additionally, the team will use the data to develop educational tools for wildfire managers more broadly. These tools will deepen wildfire managers’ insights into county residents’ needs and concerns around wildfire and the disproportionate challenges historically-marginalized communities face. Through this broader understanding, managers will be more prepared to address community needs and support equitable responses.

This important initial research and data analysis supported by Wonder Labs will inform our group’s future collaborations with the VRFSC. Insights gained from the survey and focus groups will be incorporated in the revised CWPP so that it is tailored to meet community needs.

Our work is generously funded by  Wonder Labs’ Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire Design Challenge Program . This project is also supported by the mentorship of Shefali Juneja Lakhina of Wonder Labs, Amy Berry of the Tahoe Fund, Daniel Godwin of the Ember Alliance, and Faith Kearns of the California Institute of Water Resources.

We would also like to thank our community partner, the Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council, our faculty mentor Dr. Sarah Anderson, our PhD student advisor Louis Graup, and the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management for making this project possible.

Artwork on the cover page is courtesy of Bri Baker.