Cal Fire publishes new danger cards for Bay Area, Wine Country

Cal Fire released new maps of the fire threat to Coastal Northern California on Monday as part of a two-month rollout process that ends on March 24 with South California.

The new cards include Oakland, the place of the 1991 tunnel fire, which killed 25, and Santa Rosa, which is still relaxed From the Tubbs Fire in 2017, which killed 22. It also includes the wine country in Northern California, which was plagued by devastating fires such as the Kincade Fire in 2019 and the 2018 ranch.

Fourteen of the 109 cities that were mapped in the North California region in the coast, recorded the area for the fire areas with the highest risk, including Oakland. This is comparable to one of 35 cities that record such a decline in the map of Cal Fire Northern California published two weeks ago.

The publication comes just a few weeks after the devastating palisades and Eaton fire in Los Angeles County questions about the Accuracy of Cal Fire's assignment process. The cards are published more than three years according to the state legislator asked the agency To better identify the risk of prison in cities and other developed areas in which the fire brigades in the city and the district are responsible for the execution of bladder.

Gaverneur Gavin Newsom's office said the tickets would insert at least 1.4 million tomorrow in zones in zones after completion, in which many regulations are required for increased fire security. more than doubled The country under the expenditure of the local fire brigade with these highest severity names. More than 360,000 of this hectare are located in the North California region in the coast.

Cal Fire published new tickets for the country in which it is responsible for the reaction to fires in 2023, including “moderate”, “high” and “very high” zones. While Cal Fire mapped “very high” zones for local areas of responsibility over a decade ago, the new cards now also contain “high” and “moderate” zones.

The state law according to which the new mapping is necessary also expands the fire protection regulations that apply to the “very high” zone on the “high” zone. This includes defensive space requirements and hardening measures for house hardening in new constructions, e.g.

Oakland recorded the largest decline in the “very high” and “high” hectare in the regions. While the cards from 2011 described more than 10,000 acres as “very high”, the new cards only describe 1,945 as “very high” and 2,598.

Berkeley also recorded a remarkable decline, with its “high” and “very high” cultivation area sank in two halves.

In an explanation of The Times, Cal Fire said that some factors could explain the changes to the acreage, but did not respond to certain cities or counties. The agency said the new maps used an updated fire model with more detailed climate and extreme weather data.

The model calculates the likelihood and intensity of the fire in wildlands and estimates how far fire could penetrate into an populated area. As a result, all Wildlands who have been developed since the previous cards have seen a change in the danger, said the agency.

A new technology for modeling fire behavior on the Wildland Urban interface, which better estimates how wind-driven embers have also caused significant changes in zoning, according to the agency.

San Jose recorded the greatest increase in Acres, which in “High” and “very high” in Acres Zonten. Cal Fire added almost 20,000 hectares into the zones, including large parts of the outer city, which are crowded against the coasts -Redwood forests and the Diablo mountain chain. Cupertino, the neighboring San Jose, saw his two highest Hazard zones from 16 hectares to almost 1,600.

The non -legal Sonoma County, part of the California wine country and home of the Greater Santa Rosa region, saw his “high” and “very high” zones of only 11 hectares in the old cards to explode to more than 16,700 hectares.

The counties Mendocino and Napa, deep in the wine country, also recorded significant increase, although most counties fall into the state areas of responsibility of Cal Fire, not in the local areas of responsibility that are subject to the new cards.

The new models from Cal Fire explain better how flying embers contribute to fire distribution, calculate the risk based on the most extreme windy and dry conditions and use more detailed and up -to -date climate data. While the new “high” zone is responsible for a large part of the increase in the acreage, it was not immediately clear which factors contributed to the increases and decreases of the “very high” zoning.

The publication triggers an approximately five -month watch, in which the local governments use public contributions to the new maps before officially accepted and apply stricter regulations. Local jurisdiction can choose to increase the severity of the regions, but they cannot reduce them.

Cal Fire is firmly considered. The dangerous cards have no direct influence on the insurance tariffs of the residents and say that the cards are at risk – the likelihood that an area will experience a forest fire – not the risk that certain houses have burned down. Some of the fire security experts pointed out that the increased increased measures for fire security insurance companies can encourage the premiums required in higher Hazard communities.

PDFs for every city and every district as well as further information and acreage are available on the Cal Fire website.