New fire map adds 3.5 million acres to dangerous areas in Los Angeles and SOCAL

The California Forestry and Fire Department released an updated regional map of the fire crisis severity for Los Angeles County on Monday, the first in more than a decade, adding 440,000 acres of hazardous areas, including a 30% increase in land for the highest severity rating.

The press release (including all Southern California, marking the end of the agency’s two-month statewide launch) provides Los Angeles cities and counties with about five months of clocks to gain public input, make adjustments and begin enforcing enhanced fire safety regulations in the new area.

The new Cal Fire Maps are only available to areas where local fire departments such as the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Fire Department are responsible for responding to the fire. Previously, Cal Fire only mapped the highest severity ratings for these local areas of responsibility, “very high.” The new map also includes the “medium” and “high” areas of Cal Fire.

Cal Fire recently updated all three areas of the areas that responded to the fire in September 2023. However, the agency last updated its map, which was responsible for the local fire department in 2011.

The city of Los Angeles has increased its area by 7% in “very high” areas. The increase in new “medium” and “high” areas has resulted in a 24% increase in the total area of ​​fire severity hazard zones.

However, non-individual areas in Los Angeles County rely on LACFDs, and in “very high” areas, they are three times larger than they are in. Most of the non-individual areas account for more than 65% of the county, including the suburbs of the Altadena, Santa Clarita and Palmdale areas, and Puente Hills near Whittier – which once existed in wild places, or in the wild world interface, which are easier to launch.

“Today, the latest Cal Fire hazard assessment map was released… underlined the ongoing wildfire crisis California is experiencing,” Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) said in a statement. “We must act quickly and at a large scale to protect our communities and ensure that the insurance market works for everyone.”

With the launch completed, California now has more “very high” danger zones than ever before. Cal Fire maps a total of 6.8 million acres of land in the local responsibility area hazardous areas: the “very high” area grew 35%, from 860,000 acres to nearly 1.2 million acres; meanwhile, 1.2 million acres and 4.5 million acres were placed in the new “high” and “medium” areas, respectively.

Among more than 50 parts of California law, the hazard severity chart is mentioned. They require homeowners to be in hazardous areas of “high” and “very high” to follow the new building’s fire safety building regulations, including the installation of multi-slab windows that are unlikely to break off on extremely high fires and cover vents and other openings to prevent embers from entering the home. Homeowners in “very high” areas must maintain defensible space around their property and disclose “very high” identities when the home is sold

The Legislature also requires local governments to conduct routine reviews of evacuation pathways in areas where serious areas are intensified and explain potential peak pressures for water supply during the disaster. Under the law, local governments must also find hospitals and emergency command centers, such as hospitals and emergency command centers, outside areas of aggravated fire hazards.

Cal Fire initially planned to release the map in mid-January; however, the Los Angeles fire that month forced the agency to postpone a large number of scientific resources to support the firefighting and relief efforts.

In the new map, Pacific Palisades and Malibu are still covered under the red “very high” area, just like they did from the old map of Cal Fire in 2011. Altadena, on the other hand, has largely no partitions, indicating that the harm is less than “moderate”, just like in the old map.

one Analysis time Only 21% of properties found periphery of Eaton Fire were designated as “very high” fire hazards. However, independent assessments of Public Welfare Company First Street have determined that 94% of the risk of wildfires are “severe” or “extreme” risks, meaning they have at least 7 chances of encountering wildfires in a 30-year window.

David Sapsis, Cal Fire research manager who is responsible for mapping at the agency, acknowledged that the model Cal Fire used to create its maps cannot fully predict the dynamic spread of wildfires entering urban areas. Instead, Cal Fire’s model is vegetation type, topology, climate and weather in wasteland areas to calculate the likelihood of burning area and the possible intensity of fires. In contrast, it calculates the distance the fire may overflow to urban areas.

The team also intends to ignore what it calls “Outline” event Like the 2017 fires, because they say it will lead to overly conservative partitions. Another anomaly: The Eaton Fire, like the Tubbs fire, is driven by ruthless, powerful winds that drive the fire to densely populated areas.

First Street is different about this. The company created a virtual representative for California that includes vegetation and human infrastructure in urban areas of the state and simulates how fires may spread, including entering areas such as Altadena. If Cal Fire’s model is a snapshot of how the fire ishaved, First Street is a movie.

Sapsis admits he wants to use new methods such as First Street in the future. On its 2025 map, Cal Fire has made only slightly revisions to its model, including the use of more latest climate and extreme weather data. It also uses a new model to estimate how far embers can bring firepower to developed areas.

Other changes in the real world (for example, new housing developments will change the classification of an area from wilderness to city, and also lead to changes to Cal Fire Maps.

In the latest release, cities across Southern California, including San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, saw the largest area of ​​acres in the divided area, with the city increasing its overall average in hazardous areas by 35 times and 45 times. Jurupa Valley saw its “very high” area expanding from 226 acres to 6,195. Hesperia’s growth increased from 715 to 15,359.

The cities of Chino Mountain, Lancaster and Santa Clarita see “very high” areas. Among all three cities, these areas grew by 13,000 acres.

In San Diego, the number of acres divided into “very high” has decreased by nearly 30%; however, the total area of ​​its hazardous areas remains slightly higher due to the new “medium” and “high” areas.

Only a few cities across the state saw a decline in total planting areas, including Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles County and Oakland in the Bay Area.

“I’ll tell you the truth before making these maps, I think the very high fire severity areas do go deep into the depths of Altadena, but they haven’t,” said Albert Yanagisawa, deputy deputy director of the LACFD Fire Department. “I asked Cal Fire and there’s a reason to see what happened, and what they said is that their models are used for Wildland Fire modeling. [urban] Fire modeling. ”

So far, Cal Fire has declined to comment on changes in specific counties and cities.

Local jurisdictions now have 120 days to accept public opinion on maps and have enacted formal regulations to implement them in partnership with Cal Fire. Typically, the decree takes effect approximately 30 days after its issuance. At that time, enhanced fire safety regulations will apply to new areas.

Local jurisdictions such as cities and counties in Los Angeles are allowed to increase the severity of an area and add more acres of land in one area; however, they cannot reduce the severity of the area or remove the acres from it.

These maps are “a critical tool for identifying areas with high fire hazards and strengthening fire safety policies in our communities,” said county supervisor Kathryn Barger. “For those who have rebuilt after the Eaton Fire, I would like to highlight that these maps provide important information to guide your reconstruction efforts. They reflect the latest fire hazard assessments and will help ensure that our homes and infrastructure are rebuilt in terms of safety and resilience.”

Fire safety advocates attribute the ongoing upward trend in the acre area to a range of factors in the development of prone areas, ecosystem changes and climate change.

“Yes, climate change has obviously and absolutely impacted the severity of our wildfires and where they occur, but before there is a climate impact, there is a land use decision,” said Howard Penn, executive director of the Californian nonprofit Alliance for Programs and Conservation. “We have been spreading in the wild for over 75 years, with little to take into account these effects.”

This is a developing story.