Staying Wise About Fire – 5 Years Post-CZU

The fires that consumed entire communities in Los Angeles this past January have served as a reminder to California homeowners that fire prevention work never ends, even if you think fire is unlikely to happen (or happen again).  

Less than five years ago, my husband and I scrambled to pack our most precious belongings and load up our dogs before driving both our cars 40 miles away from the house we had purchased only a few months earlier. We were among thousands of Santa Cruz County residents to leave after receiving mandatory evacuation orders as the CZU Fire barrelled closer to our homes. 

My neighbors and I were lucky. We returned to houses covered in ash, but untouched by fire, thanks to dedicated firefighters. We also returned with a greater appreciation for the risk of wildfire in our community. 

Since that event, my neighborhood and many others in the area have participated in a wave of fire preparedness activities, which continues to recede and return as insurance companies drop buckets of customers at a time, and as other parts of the state experience unprecedented fires, floods, and other disasters amplified by climate change. 

There are more options available than ever before when it comes to learning how to fire-harden your home. While the increase in fire preparedness is great, the challenge now is how to maintain it, says Lynn Sestak, who volunteers full time as a National Fire Protection Association Regional Coordinator and as the Firewise Program Leader for the Fire Safe Council of Santa Cruz County. 

More Prepared Than Ever

Sestak has been passionate about building community around fire preparedness since 2016, when she nearly lost her Santa Cruz Mountains home to the Bear Fire. She started by leading her neighborhood through the process of becoming recognized by Firewise USA — a national certification that indicates a community has collectively taken steps to reduce the risk of wildfire. At that time, in 2019, there were fewer than 10 Firewise recognized neighborhoods in the county. 

That changed after the CZU Fire in 2020. Sestak became highly sought-after for her Firewise program expertise and helped dozens of communities — including my own — learn how to fire-harden their neighborhoods and earn their recognitions. Now there are 84 Firewise-recognized communities in Santa Cruz County. (Statewide, 1,126 communities are now certified.)

“I think there’s a much greater awareness about wildfire risk,” and what comes with it, Sestak says. 

In particular, people are recognizing that insurance is unlikely to cover the cost of rebuilding their home, and that current building codes and regulations may make rebuilding impossible. Earlier this month, the Mercury News reported that only 127 homes out of the 900 destroyed in the CZU Fire have been rebuilt, citing difficulties with permitting and fire insurance as the key reasons.

Since 2020, more than 15,000 homeowners in Santa Cruz County have had their home insurance policies canceled or not renewed due to the increased risk of catastrophic fire loss. The only option for those homeowners is to enroll in the California FAIR Plan, a state-sponsored fire insurance policy that can be more than double the cost of private market policies. Fortunately, the FAIR Plan offers a 10% discount for homeowners that live within Firewise-recognized communities, Sestak says. 

Riding the Waves of Concern

As time passes between fire disasters and cycles of insurance policy cancellations, priorities change and interest in fire preparedness dwindles. Four years after our certification, my neighborhood’s Firewise activity now just barely meets the minimum requirements to maintain our recognition. “People are busy,” Sestak says, “or don’t think it’s going to happen to them.” 

Bill Fitler, a self-described “disaster nerd” who moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2018, has struggled to get his neighbors motivated to participate in the Firewise program in the years since the CZU Fire. In recent months, however, the adjacent neighborhood expanded its boundaries to include the 84 homes in Fitler’s area within their 600-home Firewise community because of their shared evacuation routes. When Fitler heard the news, he immediately reached out and offered his help. 

“I think the thing that changed interest the most was what happened down in Southern California,” Fitler says. Since the LA Fires, he says, “I was able to get in touch with probably more people than I’ve met in the last two years in our neighborhood, and was able to talk about Firewise.” 

Sestak has also seen a new wave of interest in fire preparedness since early January. She says that there’s usually a drop off from December through March in the number of homeowners requesting home ignition zone assessments: one-hour property tours covering specific things a homeowner can do to make their house more resilient to wildfire risk. 

“But with the LA Fires, oh my god — we got really busy,” she says. Since the beginning of this year, Sestak and her colleagues have received 42 requests for home ignition zone assessments, compared with zero in the same period last year. 

The difficulty now, both Sestak and Fitler say, is stopping the vigilance from waning again. “From my perspective, the challenge is to motivate people to care for each other,” Fitler says. “A big part of my purpose right now is: how do I help our communities come together and focus on the local things instead of the differences that can tear us apart?”