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California Mandates for growth in high fire hazard zones must stop
We can no longer ignore the real-world consequences of promoting housing growth at all costs, ignoring the impacts on the safety of our citizens.
Given the tragic LA and Maui wildfires, fire danger is naturally on everyone’s mind. Evacuation readiness planning was a top priority during the nine years I served on City Council in Mill Valley. In its zeal to promote more housing California has passed numerous laws taking away local control over housing development decisions irrespective of fire danger. Local jurisdictions like Mill Valley must comply with new state building mandates that ignore fire risk.
Please sign the change.org petition found at https://chng.it/rzDwj56VWS to make your voice heard!
Working with Google researchers, the City of Mill Valley participated in a groundbreaking simulation of a full evacuation of all greater city and county families living west of Highway 101. Actual street configurations and garage locations were used. This work was published in a peer reviewed academic journal in July, 2023.
There is a sobering impact in understanding specific evacuation times, which vary greatly by neighborhood. Details are below. Although we have indisputable data for Mill Valley, this is an issue for all communities in California with housing in high fire zones and challenging evacuation routes.
The researchers and the city developed a detailed plan that significantly reduces evacuation time, by better using our freeway access points. Plans were also made to quickly and safely store many cars in the flatlands to make room for cars proceeding out of the canyons.
For details, review the October 16, 2023 City Council meeting video on the City of Mill Valley website. Great progress has already been made, including pre-positioning tools necessary to implement the plan. Another citywide drill is scheduled on April 26 2025.
Wildfire is unpredictable, and no amount of planning can mitigate every scenario. The simulation predicts that most families will be in their cars within an hour of the start of a massive event.
At the two-hour mark, the simulation predicts that 78% of all families evacuating in the 17,000 car greater Mill Valley simulation will reach a safer location due to much better traffic planning. This is a significant improvement from the baseline. However, three neighborhoods still achieve a much slower result.
1500 cars of the 3300 cars with occupants in the combined neighborhoods of Cascade, Summit and Warner Canyon are not expected to reach a safer area within two hours. These neighborhoods represent only 20% of the total population, but 42% of the remaining evacuating cars that are at higher risk. These neighborhoods have greater density of cars, challenging road conditions, and are farther up in the canyons, in high fire hazard severity zones.
While existing conditions are difficult to change, common sense would suggest that these three areas are the LAST place to expand housing, making things worse. Irrespective of the fire danger conditions present, new state law now allows up to four units on any single-family zoned lot, originally zoned for one unit only.
Each new unit built adds more lives and cars attempting a possibly life-threatening exit from the neighborhoods least able to cope with evacuation. No city in California can stop any proposed development in high fire areas for fire safety considerations due to the state mandates.
Enough is enough. Now is the time to demand that ALL California jurisdictions be given greater discretion over building in high fire zones. The state cannot continue to ignore the consequences of it providing incentives to build in these higher risk areas. It is time for the state to better balance growth with safety.
I am promoting this call to action as a person committed to expanding the diversity in housing, but placed in the right locations. I was proud when I was in office to advocate the One Hamilton Project, a 45-unit development of low-income rental housing.
Please join me in calling on the Marin Board of Supervisors, our State Senator, Mark McGuire, and our Assemblymember Damon Connolly to advocate for allowing local jurisdictions to override our state mandated building codes regarding development levels in high fire risk zones. Connolly has recently expressed support for this idea.
Please sign the change.org petition found at https://chng.it/rzDwj56VWS to make your voice heard!
We can no longer ignore the real-world consequences of promoting housing growth at all costs, ignoring the impacts on the safety of our citizens.
This is just common sense!