Cal Fire Sacramento recently constructed two sheds to demonstrate the importance of home-hardening. The shed on the right has a metal fence, various non-combustible building features, and is surrounded by non-combustible ground cover, whereas the one on the left lacks any such mitigating qualities. After just a few minutes of having embers and fans blown on them, the structure on the left was well on its way to ignition. By the 10-minute mark, according to Fire Chief Winnacker, "we have two very different outcomes."
How far are you prepared to sacrifice your perfumed English roses around the door, your expensive landscaping and specimen shrubs, just to save your neighbors’ homes? Or perhaps even their lives?
This was the unspoken question that loomed large during the public Tri-Agency Meeting between the Town of Moraga, the City of Orinda and the Moraga-Orinda Fire District (MOFD) on Monday, Oct. 21, in the Orinda Library Auditorium.
In his opening statement, Fire Chief Dave Winnacker reminded the audience the intent that night was to present “how the work done in the district is viewed and valued by the risk transfer industry – specifically the insurance industry – and to give our combined elected officials an opportunity to discover what potential actions we could take.”
No actual proposals would be put before the officials that night, he said, “because this needs to be a collaborative community-led process.”
The presentation largely dealt with MOFD’s proposed Zone Zero ordinance which, if passed, would require homeowners to remove all combustible material within five feet of their property.
Combustible materials include dead and dying trees, wooden fences, mulch and bark, which, once ignited by falling embers, could rapidly spread to nearby homes and even destroy an entire neighborhood.
Zone Zero was initially discussed five years ago, and even though it was universally agreed, during the 2019 Fire Code adoption process, that a five-foot ember resistance zone around structures could help prevent the spread of wildfires, such mitigation measures were ultimately determined to be “too onerous.”
“It was very clear,” said Winnacker, “that there was not the community support to enact it” and so MOFD reluctantly adopted a “two foot out, one foot up” compromise which – while better than nothing – “gets us zero credit with the insurance companies.”
And it is the insurance companies that Orindans need to impress with their mitigation efforts. Although there are still no firm details of any revised stipulations, homeowners have enjoyed a constant drip-feed of possibilities since half of Orinda’s State Farm policyholders lost coverage in March.
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s latest press release on Oct. 2, continues to assure California residents that the California Department of Insurance is “working diligently to implement [their] Sustainable Insurance Strategy reforms by Dec. 2024.”
Throughout the meeting, Winnacker emphasized that “as a community, we are essentially all in this together, because fire is opportunistic, and it has a network effect every time it can find a vulnerability.”
This means, essentially, that in a block of, say 100 houses, if only 30% have undertaken home-hardening, a non-mitigated structure will end up overwhelming any structure where wildfire-based mitigations are in place.
And so it comes down to the fact that, despite being part of a community, many individuals will balk at what they perceive as draconian measures. When the meeting was thrown open to the public, it was pointed out that many people in our community live on fixed incomes or are simply not physically strong enough to make all the changes demanded of them.
Many residents claim that changing the two-foot rule to five-feet should be voluntary and that they should be allowed to make an individual choice about whether to pay extra for their insurance, or just absorb the cost of executing the mitigations.
“But it is not an individual decision,” said Winnacker. “It’s a community decision.”
“Because,” Winnacker added, “if we allow people to select voluntarily, then their decision implicates their neighbor’s survival, and I think a good example of this is traffic signals, where we all make a decision to stop at a red light, because that inconvenience allows us all to flow freely through the shared space of the intersection. I think a good way of looking at this is that it’s a network, and everything is related.”
In other words, no man is an island.
Speaking [to The Orinda News] after the meeting, Mayor Gee said she was happy to see “a fair number of residents” in attendance.
“However,” Gee added, “given the potential impact to nearly every home in Orinda, if this ordinance is updated, I urge all residents to pay attention to upcoming meetings and the process that the MOFD Board is planning for further public discussion. It’s important that the community fully understands what is being proposed and takes the time to share their thoughts with MOFD.”
