New solutions for fighting fires in California
2022.12.19 07:09
New solutions for fighting fires in California
Budrigannews.com – Atop a hill where a fire station once stood, only mud and a concrete pad remain five years after a wildfire destroyed the California wine country city of Santa Rosa.
Fire Chief Scott Westrope, whose own home was destroyed in the fire, said that rebuilding Fire Station 5, which was destroyed in the fire that destroyed more than 5,600 structures and killed 22 people, was a priority.
The station would be protected from the worst fires, which typically move upward, if it were constructed at the base of a hill. However, Chris Rogers, Mayor (NYSE:) claims that the proposed new location was in a flood zone, and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied funding in part due to rules designed to protect infrastructure from flood damage.
People in the path of potential wildfires claim that the fate of Fire Station 5 demonstrates that FEMA needs to develop more sophisticated procedures for responding to them as climate change reshapes the West of the United States, bringing warmer and drier weather that makes wildfires hotter, larger, and more deadly.
After the devastating fires that destroyed Santa Rosa and other communities in California, survivors demanded that the agency modify how it deals with wildfires. A bill updating an emergency response system that, according to critics, has been better suited to natural disasters other than fire was approved by federal lawmakers this month.
“FEMA’s mastery over the course of the years has improved at expecting and answering storms, floods and twisters,” said U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California liberal. ” Not so much wildfire.”
In a rare display of bipartisanship, Padilla’s bill was approved by both houses of Congress unanimously, with a final vote in the Senate earlier this month. It is expected to be signed by President Joe Biden.
The objective is to ensure that the agency has procedures for recognizing the requirements of communities affected by wildfire in Republican and Democratic regions of the country. Padilla stated that FEMA does not always classify wildland fires as major disasters.
For this story, FEMA declined to comment, citing a June statement by its Administrator, Deanne Criswell, in which she acknowledged that climate change has contributed to ever-larger and more frequent fires and stated, “We simply cannot shy away from the work required to mitigate future risk.”
According to Padilla’s office, the agency helped with the technical aspects of his bill.
In recent years, as wildfires have become more frequent, FEMA has been on the ground, providing survivors with temporary housing and counseling.
According to Colette Curtis, the Recovery and Economic Development Director for the city of Paradise, California, which experienced a wildfire in 2018 that resulted in the destruction of 19,000 structures and the deaths of 85 people, FEMA collaborated with the locals to enhance its comprehension of fire-specific requirements, such as the removal of hazardous trees.
However, she asserted, FEMA procedures were generally not designed with the rugged terrain of fire country in mind.
For instance, the organization usually helps to set up a shelter. However, because of the long distances and difficult roads in mountain areas, and because fire zones can be dangerous to enter for days or weeks, it was hard for FEMA to find a location after Paradise, and it was hard for the people who live there to get there.
Curtis stated, “There was a sense at FEMA that their systems could be used for all disasters, but that’s not always the case.”
The Padilla bill would make it possible for the agency to reimburse state and local authorities for deploying firefighting resources earlier than they currently do.
Additionally, it would require FEMA to devise a strategy for recognizing that melted infrastructure and roads may be a component of wildfire damage and to be instructed to devise a strategy for responding to wildfires in economically disadvantaged communities.
Because of the low value of homes, it is more difficult to meet the minimum levels of financial damages that are set by a complicated formula, poor communities are particularly at risk of not receiving funding for wildfire repairs. According to Bryan Schenone, Emergency Operations Director in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border, these levels are simpler to reach in the event of widespread flooding or hurricane damage.
In September, a wildfire destroyed all but a few houses in Lincoln Heights, a predominantly impoverished and historically African-American community in the Siskiyou County city of Weed. The requests for federal assistance in rebuilding and covering other costs for those who have been displaced have stalled.
Schenone stated, “We lost two towns this year in the McKinney Fire, and then Lincoln Heights in Weed.” Additionally, neither of those taken as a whole met the criteria necessary to be considered a disaster on the scale required.”
Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the state Department of Emergency Operations, stated that California anticipates being denied its request for a major disaster declaration for Lincoln Heights and other communities that were impacted by the wildfire that broke out last summer.
In St Nick Rosa, a medium sized city around 55 miles north of San Francisco, the Tubbs Fire in 2017 hustled through laid out rural regions, bouncing six paths of thruway, obliterating homes.
Mayor Rogers stated that it caused roads to melt and partially burned trees that posed a risk of falling, damage that FEMA was not set up to repair.
More North Korea launches spy satellite in spring
A new station site has been found and purchased by the city. Rogers stated that it has taken some time to gather resources for rebuilding without assistance from FEMA. The city desires to get things started in the approaching year.
